


Wait for it -- The Middle Years (Part1)

by Nyaar



Series: Wait for It [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Canon Universe, F/M, Family, Feels, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Love, Omnic Crisis, Overwatch strike team, PTSD, Pining, Realistic, Rein keeps getting hurt, Romance, Strike-Commander Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, anahardt, hardly his fault though, like lots of feels, yes - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-15
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2019-08-24 04:40:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 52,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16633127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyaar/pseuds/Nyaar
Summary: (2)-- The Middle Years (Part 1)The Omnic Crisis is almost over. AT LAST.Reinhardt has managed to build a cordial relationship with Ana. It is not exactly what he was after, and things could definitely be better, but he's not one to complain. On the other side, Ana realizes some changes are overdue if they are to remain friends.Just, she does not know what she's getting into, or what is it going to cost her in the long run.





	1. November 2052

**Author's Note:**

> Wait for it (Series):  
> \- The First Years  
> \- The Middle Years (Part 1)  
> \- The Middle Years (Part 2) (TBA)  
> \- ... (TBA)
> 
> The Middle Years is currently being written. It takes me some months to get a chapter ready, but it's in no way abandoned. Also, I'm writing the last chapter of this part now ;D
> 
> Let me know what you think!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A mission goes worse than expected, leaving half of the Strike Team shaken for different reasons -- Ana worries even if she doesn't want to, and tries to help in her own way.

Another day, another fight. That’s what Ana kept on thinking every time the Strike Team got deployed, day or night. Just, this mission had started with the wrong foot after Gabriel threatened to throw Reinhardt off the plane if he did not shut the fuck up straight away. 

The threat itself was nothing new but, the way he had said it today left no doubt; he was not joking this time. Which was odd. 

Ana fixed a lock of hair behind her ear and nudged the blond Captain. He had been making plans with her about the mission for the past half an hour, reviewing strategies and possible places to perch where she could take the advantage.   _ Again _ .

“Jack.”

He looked up from the datapad, blue eyes searching her face for clues about what was more important than the mission just then. When he seemed about to ask her, she leaned closer to him to whisper if there was something the matter with Gabriel.

Jack tapped the datapad screen to reveal a blank note. The fact that he would rather write than speak meant there was indeed, something going on.

“Nothing that I know of,” he wrote, “Officially, at least. Gabe’s not feeling well lately.”

Ana felt a frown drawing on her face. Granted, if Overwatch had to wait for all of them to feel fine to be deployed, they would never leave the base, but it worried her that their Commander may be going down with something bad. She still remembered when Jack got sick last time and it took him a month to recover. Super-soldier ailments were the worst, apparently.

“Don’t worry. Been keeping an eye on him,” Jack typed, and nodded. “He’s been working too hard.”

Ah, yes, of course. The UN Council was being pushy about the omniums, as if destroying them was piece of cake and they did not have to plan their strategy for months. It was actually amazing how Gabriel could pull off so many ideas to ambush the Omnics and make their team run like clockwork. Ana considered herself not bad at the job, but their Commander had a sixth sense when it came to planning. 

She looked at his frowny face, even if she could only see an ear and a bunch of short curls from where she was, and felt a surge of pride and unconditional affection she would never, ever, tell anyone about. When they were back to the base, she would call one of their movie nights. It felt like it had been too long since the last time they chilled doing nothing.

“We’ll be there in five, stop gossiping already,” Gabriel grumped, and Ana and Jack exchanged looks. The mission was going to be interesting.

 

\----

  
  


The city of Carcassonne had seen better days. All of France, actually, had seen better days. After Overwatch destroyed the omnium at the centre of the country, it seemed like things could only get better, but the French army was understaffed and undergeared, and they could only cope with so many fronts at the same time.

They French said they would come to reinforce Overwatch’s position in five hours, but it had been seven already and they had not even called, yet. The only good thing was that their position, the place civilians had retreated to, was the city’s castle. 

The battlements were still standing after so many years, made of solid stone and circled a large enclave of houses. There was a moat full of water around the castle just like in the old stories and perimeter alerts every other tower, so the team only had to focus on the main entrance while keeping an eye on the rest. The battlements doorway was no more, though, and the main entrance was now a stone bridge large enough to fit two lorries side by side. Could be better, but it was not horrible to defend, all things considered.

Besides, the Omnics had been coming in small waves from the destroyed outskirts, giving them plenty of time to regroup and even refresh themselves between skirmishes. Anything their front-line did not destroy straight away was efficiently taken care of by Ana and Jack. They were positioned in a balcony in front of the bridge, from where they could practically see everything that came their way.

“Twenty-two, here. And counting,” Jack rested his rifle on his shoulder, and Ana snorted.

“Keep dreaming,” she shook her head, giving him a side smile. “You’ll never beat me.”

“Cut the chit-chat,” their Commander snapped on the comms, and they looked at each other. Then, he continued a moment later. “No bets among the team unless I start them.”

Gabriel was joking. Sort of. But whatever was going on with him, it was bad. He had been pacing here and there, barely taking any shots, and letting the team to deal with the attacks while he looked at the distance from the battlements. He had also been silent most of the time, grunting a few orders here and there and relying in Jack and Ana mostly to group their soldiers.

It worried Ana that he was not fit for duty somewhat, but sure he would have stayed behind if that if he was  _ that _ bad. Maybe he was just saving his energies for a bigger Omnic incursion. Maybe he was just worried or busy planning ahead, as he usually did. The UN council had been giving him a hard time lately, praising his accomplishments but not his methods.

To be fair, every time they had destroyed an omnium they had blown a big hole in the country-- Unfortunately, blowing up nuclear reactors and Omnic plants always caused collateral damage, as much as they tried to contain the devastation. But, most of the times Gabriel only had to choose between saving his team or the adjacent buildings… and screw the buildings, really.

Ana took a shot far in the distance, then focused her efforts closer to their team. Reinhardt was at their front-line, as usual, but the comms were devoid of his natural liveliness. Any other time he would have pitched in with his own kill count, but the Crusader had frozen in place the moment they landed inside the castle walls. His cheerfulness gone in one fell swoop, she had not been able to get from him what was going on, no matter how much she had nudged him. 

However, she stopped worrying much when he stood his ground at the battlement’s main entrance while several soldiers used his barrier to destroy as many Omnics as possible on any wave. He prioritised the targets, kept an eye of any that could flank their barricade and informed the rest of the team of it so they could get dealt with-- but he was merely standing and defending, barely engaging the Omnics even if, in Ana’s opinion, they did not need his shield most of the time.

“Four Bastions coming our way. Five,” he counted in a grave voice. “Damn. Make them around twenty. Two coming on the right, behind that pile of red bricks. Most of them coming straight to us. Get somewhere safe, barrier would drop in seconds if they use heavy rounds. Flank them instead.”

Ana laid on the ground to make the smallest target possible, and looked over the Crusader’s shoulder, waiting for any Bastion to pop by. 

A tank shell dropped behind their front-line, raining dust and fire in the courtyard, and Reinhardt retreated from his position at the bridge.

“Where is the tank? Anyone? I can’t spot it,” he said, looking around while keeping his shield in place. Apparently, there was another way in that they had not discovered yet. Were the Omnics, maybe, planning to ambush them?

“I have visual, I’ll take care of it,” Gabriel said, jumping from the battlements to the roof of a house as if it was nothing.

The mostly-silent ruins exploded with machine-gun sounds. Fortunately, the Bastions were firing light shells, but Reinhardt’s barrier would not keep them safe for much longer.

“Rocketeers!” 

Their soldiers fired through the barrier, adding echoing explosions to the cacophony of nightmarish sounds, and Ana put on some music on her comms; instrumental music from films she had never seen. It was relaxing and packed with feelings-- feelings of what, she was not sure. But keeping her brain engaged in something that was not shots and explosions helped her focus on her targets since Gibraltar.

The Crusader’s barrier was already cracking when a tank shell exploded on it, making him take a couple of steps back. 

“Tanks in priority, come on, people!” Ana said, adjusting the scope of her rifle. She could not blow a tank to pieces with a couple of shots, unfortunately, but spotting it would be a first step in the right direction. 

Reinhardt’s pained grunt made her reevaluate her priorities, though; a Bastion was shooting at their infantry from behind -- _ where was Gabriel?? _ \-- and the Crusader was trying to protect the soldiers keeping them between his barrier and himself. Not that the barrier was going to last much more, anyway.

While a particularly loud orchestrated song played on her earphones, Ana took a shot. Two. Three. The Bastion twitched, sparking, and did not move any longer.

“Thank you, Captain!” He said, and Ana smiled a bit. It was the first time he sounded genuinely happy in hours. Unfortunately, his happiness was short-lived. “Three tanks! Hide, now!”

The second he said was the second his barrier was absolutely annihilated. The impact made him skid backward and almost lose his footing. He retreated to get under cover, protecting his head from the bullets with an arm and yet trying to be as big as a target as he could while their soldiers scattered to a better position.

“I’ll try to flank the tanks,” Jack said, dropping from the balcony he shared with Ana to the street. “Reinhardt, keep them busy, all right?”

“Busy!” The German groaned, jumping behind the ruins of a house that was being destroyed as they spoke. “What have I been doing all day?”

“Keep them  _ busier _ , then!  Smack-them-down kind of busy!”

Reinhardt grumbled something in the comms that sounded a lot like he was eating gravel, and then let out a long breath.

“You’ll have a very short window. Tell me when you’re ready!”

That sounded like he had in mind something crazy, but Ana would worry about it when it happened. She had her hands full at the moment, taking shots whenever any Omnic tried to flank them and keeping tabs on everyone’s location. Or almost everyone’s.

“Gabriel, where are you?”

“Gone fishing,” he replied with a snort, but his mic captured the sound of his shotguns. “Ambushing them from the side.”

“Be careful. You’re out of everyone’s sight.”

Ana could have ordered him to retreat but, at least, he was doing his part. She hated watching him pace like a caged animal as much as she hated the German’s silent moods. 

What was clear was that she could not leave them alone even for a  _ week _ without shit hitting the fan. At least, this time she did not came back to find a whole wing of the HQ missing due to an  _ experiment _ gone wrong, apparently, that caught both super soldiers on it. 

Really.

She snorted, reloading her rifle again. With Jack gone, she alone had to ensure nobody flanked their front-line. They were busy enough trying to take down the sentry-mode Bastions  covering the tanks as to worry about anyone else.

“Reinhardt, I’m ready!” Jack said in the comms. “Give me the signal.”

“Roger!”

The Crusader jumped out of his hiding spot and deployed his barrier, which was instantly shattered to pieces by the next two tank shells. He did not seem to care, though. He took his hammer on both hands, raised it over his head, and smashed the ground with such strength Ana could hear it despite her music.

The road cracked several feet in front of him and then collapsed inwardly, pulling two of the Bastion tanks off their tracks. 

Jack’s rifle fired a rapid pulse of shots that destroyed one of them in no time. Hoping he would take care of the other, Ana was taking shots at the one that had escaped unscratched to disable it before it could shoot again-- but Reinhardt charged it. Just, his positioning was off and he missed the wall for a couple of feet, crashing deep into the enemy lines.

Quickly, Ana put her rifle on her back and started climbing to the next balcony, where she would have a better view of the battleground ahead. It would have been super easy had she been a super-soldier, but everything was always hard-mode for her. She gritted her teeth and pushed herself up with her arms only, using the filigrees in the balcony to get a better grip and climb until she could find her footing. 

“ _ Lots _ incoming, take cover!” Ana heard Reinhardt on the general comms, and she pushed herself up the final stretch. There was no joy in his voice, no thrill for battle. If she did not know him better, she would think he was absolutely terrified.

But that was  _ absurd _ . 

When she managed to get into position again, she saw the Crusader retreating under heavy Bastion fire, using everything he possibly could to hide and recharge his barrier. Two dozens of Bastions had just advanced, protected by their numbers, and had deployed themselves in sentry mode, raining bullets towards the Crusader and in their soldiers’ general direction. Damn it, so the Omnics were really planning a big attack, and they had just been countering the scouts. Shit.

Shells started raining in the courtyard; mortar shells. They had brought heavy artillery, apparently.

“Guys, this doesn’t look well. What about we retreat a bit and fortify ourselves while we plan an attack on those mortars?” She asked, but the comms stayed silent. Jack was shooting from a corner, ahead to their soldiers, and Gabriel-- where in the world was he, now? 

She was taking her shots as fast as she could, now, trying to disable as many Bastions as possible, when she saw their Commander. He dropped from a partially destroyed rooftop in front of Reinhardt and started shooting like she had never seen him shoot before. He was so fast his weapons barely kept up with him, the Bastions around him falling in pieces as if they were made of paper.

It was both scary and amazing to watch. 

And when he ran out of bullets, he was just in the middle of the enemy lines, with no protection.

Fuck’s sake, Gabriel.

Reinhard ran towards him and used his armour to shield him while they retreated to a half-destroyed building. Their soldiers launched another barrage of rockets that quieted the Omnics for a while, and the Crusader broke into a run again, this time towards their soldiers. Gabriel was nowhere in sight  _ again _ .

“I’m hit!” Jack groaned on the comms, and Ana looked at his last known location to see him scurrying on the ground to get under cover. Shells kept on raining on them, and they were getting dangerously close to her, too.

“How bad?” She asked. “Not in a good position for a medic.”

“Will get to you, Jack, stay hidden,” Reinhardt panted, almost at their soldiers already.

“Overwatch team, Commander Lacroix here,” she heard out of the blue in a lovely French accent. “Our warplanes will be at your position in 2 mins. Get to the City Hall, we’ll bomb the hell out of those bastards.”

“About time, Commander,” Gabriel grunted, then switched to the general channel. “Everyone, fall back to the City Hall, now. Bombing incoming in 2. Go, go, go!”

“Reinhardt, the infantry needs you to retreat,” Ana kept shooting. “The Bastions would shred them to pieces.”

“But, Jack?”

“I’ll get him,” Gabriel said, wherever he was, and the Crusader deployed his barrier in front of their team again so they could all retreat down the half-ruined street as safely as possible. 

The incoming planes engines hissed loudly in the air, almost blocking Ana’s music completely.

“Guys, I still cannot see you. Need to move faster!”

The planes sounded closer and closer, and Ana stopped using her rifle to have a better idea of the battleground. Their troops were safely back, Reinhardt was still down there but far enough from the ruins, and their super-soldiers…

She was about to tell them in the comms to hide as much as they could when the squad of warplanes flew past them in perfect formation. In a moment, they were bombarding the hell out of the destroyed buildings around the City Hall, and Ana crouched, covering her face with an arm. 

Shit. 

She looked around the moment the planes drifted in the distance, trying to spot anyone among the smoke. Some small fires had started through the rubble, adding to the smoke and dust, but nothing moved. Nothing shot.

“Guys?” She called in the comms, then nibbled at her lower lip. “Position?”

Silence. Silence that made her swallow and shook her head. No. She refused to accept they could fall like this, under friendly fire. Her hands squeezed the balcony. They probably needed a moment; the explosions would stun anyone, not to say deafen them.

“Gabriel, Jack, do you copy?”

There was a burst of static on the comms, and she took a deep breath.

“To the right of the City Hall,” Jack’s voice came by among coughs. “Could use some cover.”

Reinhardt was there in a moment, his bulky figure a shadow among the dust and smoke. Ana could only sigh when two more shadows joined them and walked back to the building. One day they would be the end of her. Or, at least, the cause of her grey hairs.

Despite the apparent tranquillity of the battleground, Ana remained at her position, rifle ready to shoot and her music on-- a soft melody this time that reminded her of the blanket of snow that usually covered their Swiss headquarters. Gabriel gave instructions to their soldiers to perch on the City Hall’s balconies or around them to guard the perimeter. It was a good precaution, because some Omnics always survived this kind of attacks and they would not retreat even if they had lost the battle.

There was a moment of silence in the general comms and, then, a fucking storm started in the officers’ one.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Gabriel yelled. “You almost got Jack killed!”

“Me?” Reinhardt’s voice sounded half surprised and half  _ angry _ .“You’re the one that should have been covering his back.”

“Which I was doing, until you charged into the fucking enemy lines!”

“Don’t make me laugh! You’ve been out of position the whole mission!”

“That’s enough, you two,” Ana set the safety catch on her rifle and rushed downstairs before her bunch of idiots killed each other.

“I was scouting and flanking them because all you did was stand there with your shield doing nothing!”

“Gabe, that’s enough,” Jack intervened, and Ana hurried up, jumping down several steps in one go to get to the ground floor faster. 

“I was protecting our soldiers!”

“Keep telling yourself that,” Gabriel snorted. “I don’t know why I bothered taking you here today.”

Ana opened the door to see Reinhardt standing up in front of their Commander, still in his full armour, hands made fists, and Gabriel…

“Gabriel, hey…” she called, her eyes glued to his dark,  _ smoking _ arms. He was not on fire and it was not that sort of smoke either. It-- it was absurd, but it seemed as if it was part of him, pulsing as a manifestation of his anger. Even his curls seemed to dissolve somewhat.  

Jack gasped audibly when he noticed it and got up, a hand holding his still bleeding side, and walked towards them.

“Gabe, man, are you-- shit,” he put a hand on his shoulder. “Your arms, Gabe. You…”

“I’m fine!” He roared. The smoke seemed to swirl around him for an instant and then it disappeared. “I have it under control.”

“Under control? No, that’s-- we need to talk to the SEP program asap.”

“ _ We _ need to do nothing,” Gabriel pushed Jack away and walked towards the door. Her dark eyes dared Ana to say anything, but she just made a thin line with her lips. 

So, Gabriel was just tired, and Jack did not know what was up. Bullshit. 

  
  


\--------

  
  


Their return trip was even more fun than the outbound one. Gabriel was sitting with the pilot, arms crossed, looking at the dawning sky. Reinhardt was strapped to his seat so stone-faced it felt as if he was still wearing his helmet. So it was just Ana and Jack sitting together, sighing side by side again.

Fortunately, Jack’s injury was not terrible, and his enhanced body was already healing up. Which did not mean he could be running errands, but they had to find positives somewhere. 

He was also a bit ashamed of having blatantly lied to her, but she understood it was not his secret to share. At least, now they could worry together. 

“We think it’s something to do with his SEP enhancement,” Jack typed on the datapad once again. “Something seems to be going awry, but we don’t know what, or why after so many years.”

“Does it hurt?”

“He says it feels weird, as if suddenly he had more limbs, or something. Sometimes it makes him sick.”

“He shouldn’t be in active like this,” Ana typed furiously on the screen. “It’s not safe.”

“He--” Jack rubbed his stubbled cheek. “Let’s contact the SEP doctors, first, OK?”

“Jack…”

“I promise I’ll keep you posted about everything that happens,” he typed. “Ana, we cannot--the war. We cannot do this without him, you know it.”

She knew it, of course she did. But what happened today? It had frankly shaken her. But she was not talking about the smoke, his blatantly disregard for the mission, or being constantly out of position as Reinhardt called out, but his anger. The bitterness in his voice. 

Granted, Gabriel was not as caring as Jack, but he would never attack any of them like that. Damn, she even feared for a moment he would engage in a fist-fight with Reinhardt there and then. 

“I know, but--”

The aircraft hit a turbulence patch and Reinhardt woke up with a startle, almost head-butting the seat in front of him and scaring the hell out of Jack and Ana. He held his face for a moment before grumbling under his breath and leaning back on his seat.

“Now, he also worries me,” Jack wrote in the datapad. “He’s been acting weird today. Do you know what’s wrong?”

“I arrived  _ hours ago _ and haven’t spoken with him more than you have today,” she tapped in the screen passive-aggressively. “He’s part of your team, too, you know. You can ask him yourself.”

Jack swallowed and looked to the side for a moment. She knew Reinhardt was not exactly the kind of guy they liked having around-- too big, too strong, too handsome, and not a bit ashamed to brag about any of his qualities. He was a thought competitor and loved winning, just like them. Too many big egos in one place, she understood that pretty well. Yet, Reinhardt would lay down his life for any of them without thinking, and she would kick the super-soldiers in the butt if their petty egos prevented them from taking care of their team.

“Sorry,” he whispered, rubbing his frown with a thumb. “You’re right.”

Ana snorted, but kept on typing. 

“He was fine until we landed in France. That’s all I can tell.”

Even though the German rarely shared what made him unhappy unless it was work-related, she could always try asking him; he would not be more difficult to deal with than Gabriel, that was for sure. Their bloody Commander and his bloody secrets--

Then, it hit her. What if Jack was next? What if the SEP enhancements had an expiry date? She turned to look at the blond man, frowning in worry.

“Jack, if you start feeling--”

He snatched the datapad from her hands and winced at the sudden movement. 

“The SEP never experimented with two soldiers in the same way. The doctors-- they seemed to change things depending on our DNA,” he winced again, but this time Ana could read it was not due to his injury. She could bet their time at the SEP was anything but pleasant. “I’m fine. So far, at least.”

Ana grabbed Jack’s hand and squeezed it. Screw the datapad, she did not care if Gabriel could hear her. Actually, she kind of wished he did.

“You are not alone in this. Neither of you are.”

He squeezed her hand back.

“Thanks, really appreciate it,” he gave her that smile that melted glaciers, and she could not help but smile back. “Ah, but, if there is an urgent call--”

“I’ll go,” she nodded. “But I really hope there’s not. I’d like to see my daughter before she forgets she has a mother, you know.”

“She’d never forget,” Jack snorted softly. “We won’t let her, anyway. She looks more and more like you every day. I crack up every time Reinhardt calls her ‘Little Captain’.”

It made her laugh too, she had to admit it, but now she could only muster half a smile. Her eyes looked for the Crusader; his head was tilted towards the window, he had his earbuds on and his arms crossed over his chest. The very air around him was upset, and Ana started to think that her idea of asking him may not go as well as she hoped for.

It was easy to be direct with Jack and Gabriel, that was the language they understood and appreciated. It was easy to throw insults at them when they were being specially stubborn or dickheads, but Reinhardt would only take that personally-- and she was shit at dealing with emotions.

Jack threw the datapad to her lap to get her attention, and she could not help but raise her eyebrows first and then frown at the question written on it.

“How are things with him?”

“Why are we discussing this again?” She typed back.

“You don’t look at any of us the way you look at him,” Ana watched him write in the datapad with a shit-eating grin, and she glared at him from his shoulder.

“What the hell, Jack,” she growled. “Really. That’s not true,  _ at all _ .”

“I’m sorry, but it is,” he shrugged softly, holding his ribs. “It’s-- It’s not a bad thing, you know. The world is a pile of shit right now, and--”

“Shut up, John Francis Morrison, before I punch you in the face.”

He chuckled softly, a fond look on his face, and grabbed the datapad again.

“He’s a good guy,” he typed at the screen, making her roll her eyes. 

“It’s not a matter of being a good guy or not. I don’t look at him in any special way. I don’t-- I just don’t.”

Her team tried so hard to hook them up that she had given it serious thought, but it did not end well. Not that she expected anything different but, at least, the exercise had reassured herself in her position. First of all, they were at war, and mixing love and war was a recipe for disaster, as she was well aware. So,  _ at least _ , they had to win the war first for her to ever consider any sort of relationship again.

Second, she did not look at Reinhardt in any special way, at all. Sure, they were in friendly terms. She had fun when he was around and considered the big idiot a member of her strange family, but there was no way she would purposely look at him in a way that would encourage his feelings. 

And third, Ana was quite sure she could never love anyone enough to even consider it. Her numb heart beat only for Fareeha and, oftentimes, Ana found herself thinking she did not love her daughter as much as she should. And, if that happened with the person Ana loved the most in the world, how could she even think she could share her life with someone else? How could she be that selfish?

“You know you can tell me anything… even if I may feel a bit jealous you won’t choose me :(”

“Jack!” She hissed, slapping him in the leg. “Stop being a dumbarse already!”

He chuckled softly, merry, and leaned his head on hers. Ana let go a long breath. The only positive thing about all this was that he was having a good time after a shitty day, and that he was relaxed for a while. He worked too much despite the hours Ana put in every day to take some of the paperwork from him and Gabriel. Ah, damn Gabriel for not telling her he was in such a mess. She would have bought him dark chocolate, at least.

“Ready to land in ten, strap your belts, please,” the pilot chimed in, and Ana started making plans to deal with her friends. Talking to Reinhardt first would probably be the easiest, because he would likely head to the gym first and then to the canteen, and she could catch up with him there. 

Gabriel would be a bit more difficult because the man could hide like a ghost when he wanted to. Yet, he would have to come back to his quarters at some point; worst-case scenario, she would make camp there and just wait for him.

 

\----------

  
  


Ana had just kissed Fareeha goodnight and put her to sleep on her room even though she was old enough already to roll her eyes at her every time. It was convenient to share rooms with her. Messier, but convenient. Also, it gave Ana an incentive to come back to sleep instead of just crashing on any sofa. 

She stretched out and stifled a yawn. It was only 8 PM and she was knackered already, but she wanted to have that chat with Reinhardt before going to sleep. She knew herself and, if she did not ease her mind, she would roll in bed for hours-- and, she needed to be rested to deal with Gabriel the next day.

“Computer, where’s Lieutenant Wilhelm?”

“At the gym, sir,” the woman-like voice replied, and Ana raised her eyebrows. She could not believe he had been working out for the whole afternoon after being eight hours straight in his armour, and yet, she could  _ indeed _ believe it. It was time she bribed him out with food.

 

The walk to the gym was uneventful, probably because most of their soldiers were either deployed or resting already. There were always exercise junkies at the gym late at night, though. Ana knew it because once she went to the gym when she could not sleep, and bumped into two guys that had just stepped down from the running machine.

She opened the door to the gym and stopped on her tracks before colliding with a wall of muscle-- just the one she was looking for. Reinhardt had just stopped doing whatever he had been doing; his breathing was still laboured and his tank top was drenched with sweat. His face was an open book to her; he was still angry and upset. And hurt. Also, a bit surprised to see her there.

He took a couple of steps back to grant her access to the gym, but Ana stood where she was, settling a rebel lock of hair behind her ear.

“Hey. I was, mmm, planning to get dinner at the canteen before it closes,” she said, casually. “You going that way?”

“No,” he said curtly, the hand holding the door tightening. It was clear he wanted to bolt forward and run, but Ana was in his way and he would not make it without bumping into her. “Not hungry. Going to my room, now.”

Not hungry after killing himself at the gym? Bullshit. He wanted to get rid of her. The idea made Ana frown inwardly.

“I don’t need a pep talk,” Reinhardt continued when she remained silent. “I don’t need company. And I know where to find food when I get hungry. Now, if you don’t mind--”

Ana crossed her arms and, if anything, stood in his way even more.

“Stop being an idiot for a second,” she snorted. “I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t be, then. I’m fine, see?” He made a gesture with his hands before putting them on his hips. And he was right, he was unharmed for his standards; just a couple of bruises where bullets had impacted his armour repeatedly. “Get back to Jack. He’s the one that got hurt, remember?”

“That was not even a second. Reinhardt, I’m--”

His eyebrows twitched, and she saw the hurt in his gaze deepen and then melt into anger. Had she had not known him any better, she would have stepped aside straight away; despite his usual goofiness, he could be a downright terrifying mountain of muscles if he wanted to-- and she had never seen him wanting to be scary more than at that very moment.

“I’m not your pity project, Ana,” he snapped, pushing her away, and walking down the corridor without looking back.

Wow.

Ana stared at his back as he left. She was not angry at him; she was worried. It was likely that she had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time... but he had never lost his temper with her. Never.

Had she been such a bad friend to him that he would not consider she genuinely wanted to help? 

The beginnings of their new relationship had been plagued with uncomfortable moments, but it did not take them long to fall in a sort of routine. Nowadays, Reinhardt upheld his friendship promise flawlessly, respecting her space-- even if sometimes he did it in an awkward way.

Ana tried to be as friendly as possible while keeping in mind the  _ elephant in the room _ . Not because it made her uncomfortable, but because she did not want him to get hurt. Well,  _ more _ hurt. She had pushed him away a couple of times, disengaging when things seemed too personal, but the way his shoulders had slumped in dejection every time made her reconsider; soon she learned that entrusting him the decision of backing off was for the best.

But, truth is, after that, Reinhardt kept his distances even more. Sometimes she would catch him staring at her longingly instead of engaging in a conversation. Other times he would be about to say what was on his mind or ask her a question only to back off at the last moment, turning away-- oh. Actually, he usually turned away just like he had done today, but with  _ manners _ .

Ana had always thought it was his way of keeping himself from harm. His choice. But she was not so sure anymore. What if he thought he could not tell her what was on his mind without her pushing him away? That would explain a lot of his silences and glances. 

She had never given it much thought because there was always something more pressing to worry about-- not to say he was usually joking around and laughing with her. He had never complained, so maybe she was just overreacting… or maybe, he had never complained so she would not push him away.

_ Oh, fudge.  _

Ana huffed and leaned her back on the doorway. She hated the idiots of the Strike Team. They did not give her more than headaches and worries, each one in a different way. She was not an emotional person; she did not know how to deal with her own shit, let alone with that of others-- yet some sort of instinct kicked in every time they were in trouble and made her want to help, even if it was by just sitting by them and insulting them to laughter. 

Maybe Fareeha was to blame. 

Ah, damn. She stretched and let go a long breath. As if they did not have enough problems with the Omnics. She better go back to her room, then, try to get some sleep-- and give all this more thought in the morning. 

 

\----

 

But, of course, Ana could not sleep. 

To be fair, she had snoozed for about a couple of hours, but then she had woken up and could not go back to sleep since. It was 2:05 AM now, she was tired and aching, and her mind was going on and about her team of idiots and how screwed up they all were. 

She stretched up lazily and got up. On any day, she would wake up at 6 o’clock sharp to get on with training, debriefing and paperwork before the unexpected hit them, and her only chance to sleep a couple of hours more was a mug of hot milk.

Since Gabriel have had a small kitchen built on the same wing where the Strike Team’s rooms were, it had seen high demand for coffee, tea, and food at unearthly hours-- and Ana herself appreciated it greatly. Interestingly enough, the lights were on, and she could smell coffee.

_ Coffee _ .

Jack or Gabriel jumped to mind straight away, but it was already too late to turn around when the sound of heavy steps betrayed the Crusader.

“Reinhardt, it’s two in the--” She stopped talking when the German jumped out of his skin and collided against the counter as he turned around ready to fight. Ana raised her hands and took a step backwards. “It’s all right. Sorry to startle you.”

He ran a hand over his face and leaned on the counter. His anger seemed spent at last, but he was every bit as upset as he had been before. Just, his movements were slower, tired, and his right hand was bleeding, slowly dripping over his cotton pyjamas and the floor. 

“Wow. Who was the unlucky loser?” She asked, not sure how to start a conversation-- or even if he was in the mood for it. 

When he stared at her in silence, visibly confused and most likely still half-asleep, Ana made a gesture towards his hand.

He had the decency to look surprised, at least.

“Aw, shit, it’s not--” He sighed, inspecting the damage, his pyjamas, and the floor somewhat embarrassed. Then, he grabbed a napkin from the counter and pressed it against his hand. “I got up too quickly, ran into my wardrobe.”

The coffee machine gurgled and hissed as it filled quite a large mug, and the smell got stronger. Richer. It was Gabriel’s favourite coffee brand.

“And so you beat it to a pulp?” Ana asked, walking in and going straight to the fridge.

“Something like that…” He drawled. “Anyway, let me get the coffee and me and my mess will be gone.”

“I’d like you to stay,” she said, taking a deep breath. Since the wardrobe had been the last casualty and punching solid objects was a terrible idea, she rather try to keep him contained  _ if  _ possible. “But I won’t push it if you don’t want to.”

Reinhardt leaned on the of the biggest chair in the kitchen, giving her the back, and stood in silence for a moment.

“You want me to stay after I was a jerk to you?” 

There was a touch of irony to his voice, a hint of resignation, and maybe even a challenge, and Ana poured a mug full of milk and put it in the microwave.

“Reinhardt, you don’t know how to be a jerk,” she snorted softly. “I’m not angry with you, I know you’re having a bad day.”

He snorted, his strong back bent over the chair as if it carried the weight of the world. 

“That’s no excuse for the way I talked to you. I was such an idiot, it’s unacceptable.”

“An idiot indeed,” she imitated his tone. “But I’ll forgive you if you sit down and stay.”

“I don’t deserve your kindness,” he flopped down at the table after a moment of silence. Good. That was better than fuming away down the corridor and breaking stuff. 

Ana walked towards the computer panel on the wall and requested a first-aid kit, then took another mug, filled it with milk, and put it also in the microwave. Now it was her chance to speak with him-- even if he was likely not going to be very talkative.

“Gabriel was  _ obviously _ not himself today,” she said casually, laying a hand on his shoulder; he was so tense he could have been sculpted in rock. “But, while that doesn’t excuse him, either, I have to admit you rarely get this upset about anything. Was it--?”

“I rarely get the chance to screw up as much as I did today,” he grumbled, rubbing his scarred eyebrow absentmindedly.

“You are being too hard on yourself,” Ana took him by the jaw to turn his head a little and noticed a red mark almost hidden by the scar. He had likely run into the wardrobe head-first. “It was not--”

“I ran into the enemy lines. Missed a tank. Did absolutely nothing other than--” He stopped talking abruptly, his face scrunching as if he had just eaten a green lemon. “Gabriel was right. I could have got many of us killed.”

“That’s not true. And, in any case, we all came back alive. Now,” Ana continued, because he had opened his mouth already and he sure was going to say something stupid, “don’t say it wasn’t thanks to you, because we would have been destroyed without your help.”

Reinhardt grumbled something under his breath, and thankfully, the microwave beeping came to Ana’s rescue. She picked up the jar of cocoa powder Jack fancied over everything for breakfast and put a couple of spoonfuls on each mug. Then, she carried both mugs to the table and left one in front of Reinhardt, who was probing his fingers gingerly. 

“Ah...” He could not hide his disappointment when he noticed the mug did not contain coffee. “It’s not like I don’t appreciate it, but--”

“It’s two in the morning,” Ana raised an eyebrow. “Hardly time for a coffee.”

“Don’t want to go back to sleep,” he slouched in the chair, looking more grumpy than before.

“Why?”

That, actually, was a silly question, but it was out before she could stop it. Reinhardt let go a sigh that could pass for a snort and raised his bloodied hand slightly.

“Nightmare.”

It took Ana a moment to understand what he was trying to say. It was likely he had bolted from bed and slammed his head on the wardrobe. Half-asleep, he probably thought he was under attack and defended himself, smashing the poor thing to smithereens.

Ow, wait. If his wardrobe was like hers, it would have  _ had _ a mirror panel over the door. Ana looked at the floor straight away to see if he had cut his feet, too, but there were just blood droplets on the tiles. Good.

“It’s fine, just need a couple of days,” he said, taking a bloodied splinter out his hand and leaving it on the napkin. 

“A couple of days for a nightmare seems a bit overkill…” She cocked her head, then immediately knew that had not been the most clever thing she could have said; Reinhardt was glaring at his chocolate mug as if he wanted to disintegrate it. “What I meant to say is, there’s a lot more on your mind than a nightmare. You froze up when we landed, and everything went downhill from there.”

His eyebrows twitched, and he made a thin line with his mouth. There were a million emotions running through his head, being anger and embarrassment the most prominent ones.  _ Anger and embarrassment _ . They did not fit the Crusader at all.

Several minutes passed in silence, and Ana bit inside her mouth when it became clear that he would rather pluck his eyes out than spill the beans. As she suspected, by trying to keep things easy between them, she had crippled their friendship. Just-- this was not supposed to happen. He was supposed to know it was all right to tell her when he was upset, when he needed a friend.

She realised just now how foolish and unrealistic that sounded, and how much of an idiot she had been. An idiot for not seeing this would happen, for allowing it, for  _ encouraging  _ it. 

But there would be time to wallow in her incompetence later. 

“Won’t you tell me what’s wrong?” She asked, hoping that being straight was the right way to approach him.  “Maybe I can help.”

“There’s nothing to help,” he took a deep breath, then glanced in her direction. It was a quick look, tentative, as if he was testing the waters. Ana tried to put her best friendly face not to scare him away, and it seemed to work because he continued. “The place,” he said in a quiet voice, “reminded me of home.”

Ana stirred her chocolate. It was not a lot of information but, at least, it was better than nothing. He had said ‘home’, so ‘home’ presumably meant a city with a castle in Germany. She was not exactly familiar with Europe, so it could-- Ah, wait. The Crusaders’ headquarters were in a castle, if she remembered his stories properly.  _ Ei-something-horrible-to-pronounce _ , was it? The… Oh, of course. The headquarters they lost, along with their whole unit.

But memories of his lost home should cause sadness and grief, not embarrassment or anger-- unless she was missing a crucial point, which she probably was. When she read Reinhardt’s files the day he arrived to their doorstep, she only found out that whole unit and many soldiers perished while successfully deterring the Omnic advance over Stuttgart. Whatever else happened seemed to be lost to the world, but for him.

“My last battle there ended badly,” he continued, surprising her. “I was  _ scared _ of repeating my mistakes, so today I was trying to play it safe. Yet--” He stopped talking and let go a long, angry breath. “I don’t seem to learn, and it frustrates me to no end.”

Ana understood him well. So well, that she could not help but feel a surge of sympathy for him, and then guilt at her own mistakes, anger. But years of therapy had taught her she should be kind to herself when she meant well and things went awry all the same.

It was not an easy thing to do, though.

“You tried your best, Reinhardt, even if things didn’t go as you expected. You tried to keep us safe, to destroy the robots, to give Jack the opening he asked for, to do your job the best you could. You are your worst critic, too hard on yourself.”

“You sound just like the counsellor.”

“Because he’s right,” she sighed. “We all make mistakes, even when we mean well.”

“There are some mistakes we should never repeat,” he mumbled, looking away, and his words made her chest ache.

“I know. But, sometimes, when we try too hard to amend for those mistakes, we make others. Unwillingly. People get hurt. We get hurt. Then, we try to amend for those, too, if we can.”

That made him look up, a silent question in his eyes.

A small robot wheeled into the kitchen carrying a tray with the supplies Ana had requested, distracting her. Only when it beeped softly Reinhardt spotted it, and he looked mildly surprised when she picked up the supplies and shooed the robot away.

“Don’t look at me like that. I know you are fine. Probably,” she raised an eyebrow. “But bleeding all over the kitchen is gross. Here, give it to me,” she extended a hand towards him, and the German hesitated for a moment before complying.

She took his large hand on hers and inspected the cuts. Most of them were shallow and straight clean, probably made by mirror shards when his fist punched through the door. His knuckles had come off worst, bruised and raw, and she had to use the tweezers to remove several splinters from the broken skin. Nothing spectacular all in all, but it had to be done.

Reinhardt looked intently at their hands, his upset softening into something more akin to sadness, and Ana just remembered his unasked question. Damn it, she was sleepy indeed.

But, it was not the time to speak about their relationship and how much she had just screwed up. It was the time to help him deal with his problems, and she had just the right story to tell, too.

“I talk to the counsellor about Sam, sometimes. And about my old team. My father. It makes it easier, somewhat,” she offered, and the look of genuine surprise in his face both warmed her up and made her feel terribly guilty. 

When was the last time they have had a meaningful conversation like this? When was the last time she had allowed them to actually be friends? 

“Your old team? I’ve never heard you talk about them…”

“That’s because I suck at storytelling,” she snorted, swallowing her feelings and taking another splinter off. “But it’s not as if you talked much about yours, either.”

He lowered his gaze to the table, and she knew she had just called bingo.

Reinhardt could talk a lot. He could discuss the most absurd things in detail and use himself as an example of most, unsurprisingly. Ana had heard millions of times how bad his first armour was, how he almost got himself killed trying it on, how he won a wrestling award while at the Army, and, at least, five ways he had lost his eye, each more ridiculous than the previous one-- but all of his grandiloquent storytelling just felt wrong when he barely glided over the other characters in the story, if he included them at all.

“Talking about my team used to hurt,” she continued. “I hated remembering them, and I hated myself for what happened to them. But the counsellor--”

“What happened to your team?”

His quiet question made her look up again from what she was doing. For a moment, she thought he wanted to see if she was bluffing, but he was looking at her with his heart in his hand.

She could not say she was not expecting the question, since she had practically lured him into asking it. He was the only member of the Strike Team that did not know-- and most likely, the only one that may benefit from hearing it, as strange as it was. 

Ana remembered when she told Gabriel, one night years and years ago when they were both quite drunk. Jack learned about it later that same year when he found her crying over spilled tea. Torbjörn just put two and two together reading profiles she did not even know existed, then he let her know by dropping in her email all the pictures he could find from that time. That had not been that long ago, a couple of years, tops.

“Sorry,” he lowered his gaze again when she did not answer straight away. “It’s obviously not-- I cannot do anything right today, it seems.”

“No, it’s not that,” she rushed to say. “I was just thinking I have never told you about this before. But, believe me, it’s not because it’s a secret, but because it makes for a pretty terrible conversation opener…” 

Her joke made him relax his shoulders a bit, and he stirred his chocolate mug with his free hand, silent, thoughtful. It was rare to see him lose his cheerful nature, but boy, when he did, he really turned into someone else. And Ana hated, really hated seeing him like this. 

If listening to her story helped him realise he was not alone in the screwing department, then she would gladly tell it as many times as required.

“We were at Samalut, a city at the bank of the Nile. Well, it had been a city at some point. It had been mostly destroyed already, but we were using the ruins of the buildings to fence an Omnic attack,” she said, picking up a small flask with iodine and daubing a gauze with it. “They had just razed one of the biggest Army compounds we had back then, basically hacking their way into our defences and our equipment.”

She could still feel the heat of the desert, the dryness of the sand in her covered face, the struggle to find water they could drink. Their despair.

It sucked.

“Sam and his platoon were our best chance of survival; they had the firepower and the mobility, and the Omnics knew it. So when they came for us, they brought our own anti-tank batteries, our own missiles. Our own chemical weapons.”

A couple of cuts were deeper and were still bleeding, so she used sticky strips to keep the edges close together and help them heal properly. 

The blood was already drying, its smell mixing with that of the iodine. She snorted. This was nothing. This was nothing compared with what she lived back then. Nothing really could ever compare to the horror, the dread, the  _ smell _ of death, faeces, blood, and gunpowder in the desert’s heat.

“At one point,” she continued at last, because it was now or never, “I had to choose between disabling the anti-tank battery before it destroyed Sam’s robotank, or snipe down the drone carrying a biochemical agent that was flying over our soldiers.”

Reinhardt took a sharp intake of breath and grabbed her hands on his. She almost smiled, unsure if he was trying to comfort her or himself. 

“I saved Sam. Fareeha had just been born, and I couldn’t fathom losing him. It was wrong,” she snorted, her throat dry. “I was wrong. I knew it. I did it anyway, and I got everyone else killed. My friends, my father--”

The sound of his chair scratching the floor almost ended the sentence for her. The German knelt on the floor by her side and threw his huge arms around her and her chair almost in one motion.

His warmth engulfed her, and she felt the smouldering ache in her chest receding. His head leaned on hers, his beard tickling the side of her neck, and Ana closed her eyes. War disappeared from her mind as he squeezed her against his chest, washed away by the smell of sweat, faux leather of the gym, and the plain soap facilities used to wash all their clothes. 

“You’re the strongest person I know,” Reinhardt said after taking a long breath. Then, he pulled back a bit to look at her. He was so close she could feel his breath on her cheek, but could not find it in herself to pull him away. His blue eye was full of pride and love, and a myriad of other emotions-- and then he gasped, absolute outrage painted in his face.

“Wait, he  _ left you  _ after you did this for him??!!”

The Crusader let her go and got up almost in one motion, making fists with his hands and raging in German to the heavens.

“It’s not as easy as that…” Ana could have added more, but she refrained herself. One thing was telling him about her military career, and another very different was digging up dirt on her private life. Besides, she did not want him to go in a rampage punching the hell out of the kitchen cabinets that  _ mysteriously happened _ to look like Sam. “Believe me, he’s not worth the effort.”

“Next time I see his ugly mug I will kill him,” he said, slamming his right fist in his left open hand. Immediately after, he winced and shook his injured hand. “Ow, ow, shit...”

“Ah, settle down before you break something for good...” Ana hid her face on a hand for a moment, almost chuckling.

Reinhardt snorted softly but obliged, sitting down again in the chair in front of hers. He was still ruminating about Sam, she could see it in his face. It was strange, she thought, how he was the only one that had ever reacted like this to her story. It was flattering, somehow, that he tried to comfort her, protect her. Avenge her. He must really share her pain in some way or form, but she knew better than to ask. 

“Hand?” She wiggled her fingers, and he left his hand in front of her again. Then, he shifted on his seat and leaned his hand on his free hand. She could feel his eye on her, and risked a little glance to read the open book he was; there was pride on his look, and respect, fondness, longing-- and all that was outshining the hurt and anger for now. It was ridiculous.  _ He  _ was ridiculous. She had just told him how stupid she was, how many people she had got killed, she had been the worst possible kind of friend to him, and he still looked at her as if she was the only thing that mattered in the world.  

The  _ idiot _ .

Ana put plasters on some of his fingers, trying not to mind him or her flushing cheeks too much. 

“Will I live?” He asked after a moment, a lacklustre, little smile on his lips.

“Doubt it,” Ana made a face while covering his knuckles with a soft gauze. “You haven’t touched your chocolate, yet.”

“Pah. This American concoction hardly qualifies. One day I’ll show you what a  _ Heiße Schokolade  _ is and you’ll never look back.”

The silly German flexed his arm to give his words more emphasis, of course he did, and Ana would have laughed out loud if she had not been so tired. Instead, she chuckled while she tried to stifle a yawn.

“Ah, but I’m keeping you up--” He said, his expression turning sad and guilty. Damn, it had been a short-lived victory, she thought, finishing bandaging his hand to keep the gauze in place, at least, for the night. “I’ll go watch some telly-- somewhere far from walls and wardrobes, I promise.”

“Want some more company?” Ana asked, watching him clean of dried blood the tiled floor, the counter, and even the table. Her hands were smeared, too, as were her clothes where he had touched her, but she would clean up later.

“You’ve done more than enough,” he took a deep breath, then smiled. It was not one of those smiles of his that competed with the sun, but it felt like a treasure all the same. “Thank you, Ana. You may think I’m crazy but, it-- listening to you helped. And I’m sorry, again. I was such an arsehole, I don’t deserve you.”

Actually, she was the one that did not deserve him, but she took good care of not saying it out loud. 

“Silly,” she snorted softly, instead. “Glad I could help. But, what you said at the gym, the ‘pity--’”

He went strawberry red in the space of a heartbeat and rushed out of the kitchen, ducking the door frame in the last second.

“Go-good night, Ana!”

Ana watched in disbelief as he disappeared without even let her finish her question.  _ Really _ . They had just been talking about truly horrific situations,  _ real _ problems. He had managed to talk to her about what was eating it up, and yet-- yet somehow this was a whole new level of embarrassment. At least, this kind had nothing of self-loathing on it. It was just the classic “I’ll die before admitting to anything” sort of situation. 

In any case, her screwing up their friendship was something she had to find a way to deal with. Being the dear he was, he would probably forgive her, but she should really step up her game before she broke it completely. And she should make it up for him, somehow.

She leaned her head on her hands and sighed, but the sigh became a yawn. Better go back to sleep, now. She still had a lot of thinking and catching up to do in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gasp. New story. More dram--- I mean, more adventures! :D More cuteness. More fluff. More tears. >8) 
> 
> This chapter was fun to write because, really, how many matches don't go this way? 
> 
> Also, I cannot seem to stop giving Rein a hard time on each chapter. BUT, you cannot blame me. I always play him, and we all know being the tank is a party... Besides, he must have got all those scars somewhere... *runs away*
> 
> *Comes back for a second* I'M STILL LOOKING FOR A BETA READER...


	2. November 2052 (Some hours later)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rein is having a though time with his memories but, (un)fortunately, Jack and Gabriel are there to help.

Reinhardt woke to a cramp in his neck. He sat up, disoriented. His mind was torn between the stabbing pain and the fact that he was precariously sitting on something, so it took him a moment to actually know where he was.

Couch. The Rover meeting room. Swiss HQ. Shit. He had lost count of the amount of times he had woken up there in the past two or three years.

He ignored the sharp pain in his right hand as he kneaded the muscles into submission, but soon his shoulders and back joined the chorus of aches. Then, it was the rest of his body.

He stretched out with a long, sleepy yawn; waking up sore was nothing out of ordinary, but the way his hand hurt was not exactly-- wait. Bandages, he noticed at last. Ah, the wardrobe. _Ana_ . He almost smiled, remembering how she took care of him, the chocolate. _Everything_.

The way he had talked to her made him want to scoop his eyes out with a spoon.

He sighed, probing his bruised knuckles softly. The wardrobe door was not very solid, mirror or not, but the clothes-hanger rail was. Moving the fingers hurt, but he was sure he had broken nothing-- it was not exactly the first time he had punched something he should not have. Maybe it would be a good idea to move the wardrobe somewhere else… Though, if he could get Ana to take care of him again, he would not mind keeping it where it was.

He ran a hand over his hair. He would have loved to invite her to watch a film but, by the time she had finished bandaging his hand, he sure had used up all his luck for a year. He would rather retreat on his own than make her give him the cold shoulder for weeks. He really, _really_ hated that.

Besides, he already had been the biggest idiot in town for asking her about her story. His stomach dropped at the thought. How could she live with what happened? He could not fathom being in her boots, yet she had moved on. She was a good soldier, a good Captain. She cared for the team, she would put herself at risk to get a better shot and save someone. She got her eyes enhanced to keep them safe. She was a good mom to Fareeha, a good friend to them all.

If she was not inspiring, he did not know who was.

Besides, she had gotten out of her comfort zone to help him and take care of his mess. He could not put in words how much that meant to him, but he should let her know, somehow -- as long as she did not insist in asking him about his stupid comeback.

He felt a surge of embarrassment just by thinking about it. Good grief. Some days he could do nothing straight. He sighed, rubbing his scalp vigorously.

She-- Ah, she was so strong… And then, there he was, losing his nerve over how similar to Eichenwalde the French city was.

The moment they set foot in the castle, when the battlements and the tall towers cast their shadow over him, he felt the icy grip of dread on his chest. His limbs went numb as his heart leaped like a runaway horse and only after a while, Ana’s shoves made him move again.

He would have given a hand to take his helmet off at that point because he was panting like  a dog, but he did not dare to face her or anyone, for the matter. Let alone when the Bastions were already attacking.

He did not dare, in fact, to do anything that was not hold his shield and stand in front of his soldiers until Jack asked him for support. And, of course, he had to fucking miss a tank and then charge into the enemy lines.

 _Goddamnit_.

He had panicked then, because that was _exactly_ what he knew would happen and he fucking did it anyway, leaving his team way too far away so they would die again. And, if all that had not been enough, Gabriel jumped in the middle of all those Bastions and almost gave him a heart attack.

Reinhardt squeezed his eyes with a hand, fighting the urge to punch himself in the face. He could forgive himself for freezing over a castle but, for being absolutely useless? That was a different story.

Yet, his mind kept going back and again to the castle. The battlements. The flags waving in the air. Maybe he was being too hard on himself, like Ana said? Maybe he had been too distracted to think straight.

He wanted to believe it, but the pit in his guts said otherwise. Thinking or not, he should be better. He could be better. He just needed to train harder. Fight harder. Maybe review past missions, see how he could have done better.

He could use the holoroom for that, he thought, getting up-- slowly. His legs and lower back also needed a good stretching, but the way his replaced knee complained made him frown; overdoing it at the gym after spending hours in his armour was never a great idea, but he always seemed to forget about it until everything ached.

Well. Whining about it would not help matters, but preparing a better training regime might. But first, he would take a long shower. Hopefully, the water would drown his worries and his embarrassment, and would help with the soreness.

\---

 

After the shower, his hair still dripping wet, Reinhardt removed the wet bandages and plasters from his hand. The area around the knuckles was swollen, the unbroken skin painted in several shades of purple. Water had softened the scabbing over the scrapes and cuts, but the sticky strips over the deeper cuts were still holding.

It looked way worse than it was, to be honest, but he would not mind having it bandaged again if Ana was to do it. Oh, but, actually, nothing prevented him from asking her. He felt a smile creeping in. He could use that as an excuse to give her a little present.

Now, what could that be? What did Ana like? She was not known for having many possessions-- none of them did. She always dressed in military clothes, wore no jewellery and, even if she did, well, she was likely to take his present the wrong way. It had to be something much more mundane. But, what?

Reinhardt took a couple of rice crackers from a cabinet and devoured them. The global war had made both supplies and commodities scarce; salt and sugary products, such as that chocolate Ana offered him yesterday, were considered luxuries in many countries. Just, that chocolate paled before the real thing he used to have when he was a boy.

Now, _that_ would be a present for her, if only he could find some.

He sat on the bed and wiggled his trusty compression sleeve around his replaced knee. Of course, he could buy stuff at the canteen, but what if she did not like it?

No, he would need to think of something else. But, _what_?

He was buttoning up his cargo pants when someone knocked at his door— which was unexpected, given the time it must be.

“Come in,” he said, and Jack obliged. _Jack_. He was wearing his fatigues, his hair coming up in perfect spikes, his blue eyes always confident—wait. Reinhardt looked at his wrist datapad and had to hold himself on the wall.

It was fucking 8:30 AM. Shit, no wonder he was starving. They all usually started the day at 6 AM sharp, and honestly, he did not remember the last time he woke up this late while not being at the Med Bay.

Shit. He had also missed the first meeting of the day. _Oh, boy. Great job, Reinhardt._

“Hey, you weren’t around for breakfast _or_ debriefing, so I thought you may still be he-- Holy smokes, man,” Jack said when he spotted the wardrobe in shambles. “What happened?” He blinked a couple of times and then frowned, continuing before Reinhardt could answer. “Ok, I’m shit at this but, you know, I can pack a punch or two if the gym is not available…”

“The gym was available,” Reinhardt rubbed the back of his neck upon seeing Jack’s suspicious glare. “This was unintentional. I ran into it at night.”

The other man cocked his head and pursed his mouth when he spotted his hand. Shit. Whether he broke the wardrobe because of a nightmare or in a fit of anger, there was no good answer.

He almost took a step backward, the threat of the counsellor heavy in the air. He hated going. Really did. It was a waste of time that made him feel worse at the end of the session than when he got in. No, beer and a chat with Torb was a much better solution to his troubles, even though the Captain would not see it this way.

No one ever did.

“I had mine moved away from the bed long ago, man,” Jack snorted softly in the end, looking at the vandalised wardrobe with an indescribable expression on his face. “Cannot count the times I’ve broken the door... Just clean the glass ASAP before someone has an accident.”

“ _Ja_ , I didn’t have time, yet,” he said, relieved that Jack would not press it.

He was about to offer him a seat, but there was nowhere to sit. His room was usually neat —this was the Army, after all— but his bed was undone after leaving in the middle of the night, his clothes were still on the chair, and the floor was a mess. Hardly appropriate for visitors, unfortunately.

Jack started talking, though, as if it did not matter. Not only that, he did with the ease of someone that had been awake for hours and had no trouble sleeping; too fast and too annoying for Reinhardt to follow when he was still struggling to put his t-shirt on right.

“--and so, hoped you’d be up for some sparring,” the Captain finished and looked at him, eyebrows raised, waiting for an answer. Well, whatever he had said was probably very interesting, but the last bit was definitely a _nope_. Just, his hand was a feeble excuse, mentioning his knee would grant him detention on Med Bay, and he did not want Jack howling with laughter at his aches and pains after the gym.

“Didn’t you get shot yesterday?” Reinhardt asked instead, raising an eyebrow.

“Ah, that’s dealt with,” Jack raised his t-shirt to show him his side. There was a pink patch of skin over his ribs— a scar.

“Bloody super-soldiers,” he snorted, putting his boots on.

“Ah, don’t be like that,” the Captain changed his weight from a leg to the other, amused. “Sure the German army had a program like the SEP. Or is it a coincidence most of you Crusaders were like freaking towers? I remember reading that your General was taller than you.”

“ _Ja_ , he was four inches taller than me, as he loved reminding me of…”

He remembered putting on years in the Army, getting taller and bulkier, and yet looking distraught at the mountain of a man that was Balderich— until one day he realised he could look at him in the eye without breaking his neck.

He could imagine him now, laughing at him, hands on hips, because he was taller than Reinhardt even with his head shaved. He laughed a lot, the bastard. And loved picking on him whenever he could.

Balderich would have liked it in Overwatch. Not only that, he would have been a great Commander for the team _if_ Reinhardt had not--

He made fists with his hands and squeezed them hard enough for some of the cuts to reopen.

“Ah, I don’t know,” he swallowed, and tried to bury the feelings underneath a forced smile. Every time he had a bad rub with his past, even the smallest details brought back memories of Germany. “While most of our squadron was above the average size, we were from different backgrounds and I don’t recall having heard of any genetic modification. Maybe we Germans are naturally like this?”

“Of course, why didn’t I think of that?”

Boots tied, he stood up in front of Jack-- he was a tall, muscular man on his own right; but how much that was the super-soldier serum, he would never know. Nor it mattered, at the end of the day. He was a good soldier and a nice comrade; one that Reinhardt had no idea what was doing in his room.

“So, not to sound like a dick but, is there something other I can help you with, or…?” He asked slowly, hoping to come straightforward enough to have an straightforward answer. He was not in the mood for riddles. Or, at least, the only riddle he was interested in was thinking of what he could do for Ana.

“Well, I just wanted to, you know,” Jack rubbed the back of his neck and looked around, “do stuff together. We rarely do much together other than group training. Thought it might be good to know you better.”

That was interesting, considering he and Gabriel did everything together with little room for anyone else (other than Ana, of course). Not that he was opposed to the idea; Reinhardt loved hanging around with his team more than with anyone else, but it was nothing but strange after so many years. Unexpected, so to speak.

“It’s ok, though,” Jack continued so quickly that Reinhardt wondered if he had looked at him the wrong way. “Was just an idea. Will leave you to--”

“Can do a light workout with you if I can get something to eat, first,” he said before the Captain had absolutely committed to his retreat. “Emphasis on _light_.”

Exercising would ease the soreness and help clear his mind. It always did.

“Light?” Jack raised his eyebrows. “Ok, I know yesterday was rough, but I’m starting to worry.”

He looked worried indeed, and Reinhardt forced his slow-working mind to join the dots. Probably that was why he was there in his room. Not because he suddenly wanted to spend more time with him, or train, or anything, really. That was just the excuse.

Maybe yesterday he concealed his issues worse than he had imagined.

“Appreciate it, but no need to worry,” he clapped Jack in the shoulder. As long as Gabriel did not know, he may still avoid the counsellor. “I’m no super-soldier and had a rough day. That’s all.”

“Actually, you--” the Captain stopped talking abruptly, torn, but took a breath and nodded. “Right. Let’s go get you some food, then.”

 

\-----

 

Half an hour later, Reinhardt was ready to try his luck at the gym. He was still stiff and sore from yesterday’s crazy workout despite the warm shower, but he had been there before. And, as such, he rolled his shoulders and started an easy warm-up routine, trying to ignore Jack’s amused snickering every time he grunted at the effort.

A lot of sweating and growling later, he jumped to the pull-up bar and managed to do a series of ten without dying.

“Good job, man,” the Captain smacked him in the arm.

“Ah, that felt good,” Reinhardt sighed, stretching his way-less-sore back. “But I better stop that before I screw my hand any further. Ana wouldn’t be pleased.”

“Ana?” Jack crossed his arms over his chest and cocked his head. “Is there something, you know, going on?”

“As if,” Reinhardt snorted and took a long gulp from his water bottle. “But she took care of my hand even if I had been a complete jerk to her, and the least--”

“A jerk? You? Can’t believe that.”

Reinhardt frowned and crossed his arms at Jack’s choice of words. He and Ana always were so in-sync it was nauseati— He slapped himself at the thought and shook his head.

Listening to them talking yesterday had grated on his nerves so much that he had wanted to slam Jack’s face against the aircraft’s wall and throw him out for good. It had been pathetic. _He_ had been pathetic, and he felt utterly embarrassed about it. It was not his place to be jealous, absolutely not. Ana could spend her time however she pleased, and with whoever she pleased— as much as he hated it was not with him.

“Man, you are really scaring me today. Maybe you should see a couns--”

“I’m perfectly fine!” Reinhardt put his fists on his hips and puffed his chest, hoping that he would not notice his nervous swallowing— but Jack did not seem to be buying it, and so he recurred to desperate measures. “What about we run some laps around the building?”

The look in Jack’s eyes suddenly changed to that of a predator. He was fast; faster than any of them and not humble at all about it. Reinhardt knew he would not let go of an opportunity like this.

“Sure you’re up to it? This is my thing, and I won’t go easy on you.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Reinhardt snorted, relieved beyond measure. He would rather wheeze his lungs out trying to keep up with him than see the counsellor any day. “But I thought shooting was your thing.”

“I can also give you a beating at that if you want,” he crossed his arms, the smile of the cat that ate the bird plastered on his face. Then, his expression sobered. “On a more serious note, do you remember to train your aim now and then? With a firearm, I mean.”

“Ah, Jack, I grew up in the Army as much as you did! Of course I train my aim,” Reinhardt rolled his eyes. And it was not a lie, just he did not train it as frequently as the Captain would like him to. Besides, if he had to resort to firing a rifle while in combat, they were more than screwed. “Now, let’s go running before I ditch you for my breakfast.”

They fitted ice grips on their trainers and put on some hoodies from the locker; running or not, it was November in the eternally snowed-in Switzerland and they did not want to slip or freeze to death the moment they stepped outside.

Reinhardt’s stomach grumbled, and he rubbed it absentmindedly. Soon he would go to have a proper breakfast. Mmm~ sausages with eggs and roasted veggies. A classic. He smiled to himself. He just needed to run a bunch of laps and he would be back in the warmth with his food, and he could get on with his day.

He had another idea to manage what happened in France— he could also use the holoroom to stride across several castles, including Eichenwalde. The mere idea made him swallow, but he was no coward. Besides, anything was better than going to the counsellor. _Anything_.

“Ready for me to double your laps?” Jack interrupted his thoughts jumping by his side, rubbing his hands together. “Maybe triple them.”

“Preposterous!” Reinhardt made slits with his eyes. He could admit when an opponent was way better than him, but he would not allow anyone to destroy and humiliate him without a fight. “I dare you to try.”

“Six laps,” the smile in Jack face grew bigger, and Reinhardt had to restrain himself from cracking his knuckles. “If I triple yours, you would train with me at the shooting range for a week.”

“If you can’t, you’ll help me repay Ana for her kindness.”

“That’s a deal,” the Captain punched him in the arm. “Prepare to eat my dust. Or my snow, in this case.”

“We’ll see about that…” Reinhardt snorted, stretching his legs and his lower back. What Jack did not understand was that he would do anything for Ana-- and winning a bet was no exception, aching knee or not.

 

They dashed at the command of “go” and boy, was Jack fast. His strides did not seem to register they were running on snow instead of on a track and, in seconds, he was leading the race. Which was expected, but still impressive.

Soon enough, Reinhardt was alone amid the cold white silence of the snowy landscape around the building, and he put on some music to keep things interesting.

Unlike Jack’s, his body was not made for running. Yet, the additional effort of sinking in the snow was similar to running in his armour. He grinned as he pressed forward, heart thumping almost in sync with his strides, Hasselhoff blaring on his earbuds. As long as his knee did not fail him, he could convert enough of his endurance into speed to keep Jack from winning.

“On your left!” The Captain said when Reinhardt was barely more than half-way through the first lap. Jack was ungodly fast, that was for sure. His cheeks were pink, his hair wet with snow, and he was laughing.

 _Let him laugh._ He would not be able to keep the pace. Reinhardt was positive about it. He remembered his first Winter in Eichenwalde, when his armour was a half-working freezer and he still had to get in it to play war games for the Army. And before that, the Winters in the Black Forest as infantry and as part of the armoured division. Hah. This was nothing, he thought, chasing on.

Seven minutes later, Jack was already on his third lap and Reinhardt had cleared three quarters of one.

“Guess what?” Jack panted as he ran past him again.

His teasing was getting old already, but his strides were slower— he would not make it, not by a long shot, and Reinhardt almost cackled. If he had learned something while protecting their team was that a lot of battles were won by patience alone.

After eleven minutes, Jack was close to finishing his fourth lap and Reinhardt was trying to close their gap as much as possible. He was half way into his second lap and pushing as much as he would go. His tired body was complaining already, so he focused on his breath and his objective.  And his breakfast.

Ah, how he hated running.

He turned around a corner and saw Jack trotting slowly in front of him, almost as if he was waiting for Reinhardt to catch up. Almost. Jack turned around at the sound of his footsteps and the panicked look on his face was absolutely worth the burning ache spreading up Reinhardt’s legs.

The Captain pushed forward, trying to get his pace back. In his hurry, one of his trainers lost grip and he fell in a spectacular tumble of limbs and snow dust. Reinhardt tried to jump over him, but they were too close; he tripped on one of Jack’s flailing limbs and rolled over him in the air to land on the snow a few feet apart.

Well, at least he had ice on everything that hurt, now.

Jack groaned, getting on all fours and then scrambling up. He jumped a couple of times in place, shaking his sweatpants while hissing.

“Bloody snow _everywhere_!!”

Reinhardt could not help but chuckle and pant at the same time. He got up slowly, his body resenting all the extra running, and gasped when the muscles around his bad knee cramped and locked it in place.

“You ok there?” Jack walked over to him while rubbing his lower back. “Cramp?”

He grunted as an answer, digging his thumbs on his thigh and running them down the sides of the knee to ease the muscles and the tendons. His leg cramped sometimes as a side-effect of the surgery, but the knee had never locked like this.

It was anything but fun.

“Ah, I was so unlucky,” Jack grabbed his waist to help Reinhardt keep his balance as he worked. “You really took me by surprise, there. I wasn’t expecting you.”

“ _Ja_ , you were too busy busting a gut to notice the big German,” Reinhardt snorted, testing his weight once he managed to loosen up the cramp. A sharp pain ran through his knee, but it settled quickly in a burning ache. Compression sleeve or not, there would be no more running for him in a couple of days, at least. “Let’s go inside, eh?”

“No way,” Jack put his hands on his hips. “Not going to finish? What about our bet?”

“I won!” He slapped the Captain in the back, making more snow drop from him.” You can’t run six laps in the time I clear two. Not even in my worst day.”

“What the— I almost had you!” Jack groaned as they walked —or limped-- towards the building.

“I cannot hear you over the sweet calling of the breakfast I rightfully won, Jack...”

“You know what? I take it away. You can very well be a jerk when you want.”

That made Reinhardt laugh.

Coming back to the building was like getting slapped in the face by a huge, warm, dry hand. The difference in temperature and humidity took Reinhardt’s breath away for a moment, but soon he was sighing in content. He could almost taste breakfast already.

The warmth melted the snow on them so quickly that, when he reached the changing rooms, he had to change all his clothes. A long suffering huff coming from Jack’s locker made him think he was not the only one with that problem, and he chuckled.

He was dog-tired, but in a better mood altogether.

“I won’t accept defeat!” Jack said all of sudden, slamming his locker closed while holding a bunch of clothes that barely hid his nakedness. “If I can lose without evidence, so should you.”

“Without evidence?” Reinhardt snorted, taking his wet clothes off. “You were about to drop dead when I reached you, and I just needed--”

“You needed a complete lap, at least! I would have recovered way before you had done even a quarter. This is an absolute abuse. We both should either lose or have a rematch.”

That was rubbish. Completely and utterly rubbish. But Reinhardt was still at loss about Ana and should rest his knee. As unfair as it might be, he would need to find medium ground with the super-soldier.

_For now._

“Ah, damn, I’ll go to the practice range with you,” Reinhardt said, putting in a dark blue t-shirt. “But tell me what I can get Ana.”

Jack looked surprised for a moment, then erupted into laughter.

“Sugar and cinnamon doughnuts. She loves them,” he nodded with an amused grin.

“I’ve never seen her having those…”

“Of course not. They’re expensive, and the calories are worth two hours of cycling, at least,” Jack put on his boots. “But I always get her one or two when I need help with something specially horrible.”

“Then she’ll know I’ve spoken to you…” Reinhardt rubbed the back of his neck, frowning.

“Bake her a cake, then,” he shrugged. “Buy her tea. Make her cookies. I don’t know what else to say, man. Or,” he continued, raising a finger, “you can ask Gabe. He knows her better than I do.”

“Just what I had in mind,” Reinhardt rolled his eyes. First, baking was out of the picture unless he planned to burn the building down, or worse. Buying tea leaves could be an option, but that would need to wait until he was off-duty. And second, no. No way he would ask Gabriel about this.

“You know,” Jack continued, though his tone was more tentative, now. “He is having a rough time with--”

“Really?” Reinhardt snorted, lacing his boots. “Hadn’t noticed!”

“It’s nothing personal, Reinhardt. Don’t--”

“I know. I just happened to screw up, unlike the rest.”

“About that, is, you know, something the matter? You were unusually restrained, yesterday.”

Reinhardt drew a long breath and considered slamming his head against the nearby wall for not shutting his mouth when he should have. But it was too late, now; Jack was waiting for an answer.  

“I was trying to protect the team better,” he said slowly, and it was not a lie. Just, it was not all the truth, either.

“Well, you already do a great job. Though, sometimes a good offence is a good defence. Like, when you broke the ground and made them all scramble,” Jack made a gesture with his arms. “Actually, that was quite cool.”

“Of course it was! Been practicing it a lot,” Reinhardt crossed his arms, secretly relieved that Jack did not think he was useless. That made him feel marginally better about the whole thing. “I’ll do better next time, promise.”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” the other man punched him in the arm, playful. “We all have bad days. Look at Gabe. I’d have killed him when he jumped in the middle of those Bastions.”

“You’re not the only one…” he snorted. “Does he have the smoke-thing under control, now?”

“He’s less angry with the world today, I think,” Jack winced, and Reinhardt wondered what sort of conversations and whatnots were happening between the two men. “I’ve contacted the SEP program this morning and I’m waiting for news, but we need to keep this in secret for now.”

Made sense. Having their Commander dissolve like a ghost was not the sort of thing that would help the morale of their troops. Thought, truth to be told, Reinhardt was not exactly apprehensive about that. Maybe he had lived enough battles, super-soldiers, and Omnics to care— or maybe he had charged one time too many against a wall.

“I understand,” he nodded. “But, concealing the smoking and that temper will be fun.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean…” Jack’s shoulder’s sagged, and Reinhardt put an arm around them.

“I can always wrestle him,” he said with a devilish smile, flexing his free arm. “Give him a beating so he has something to be angry about.”

“Fuck man, I didn’t know this side of you,” Jack seemed half bewildered and half scared for a moment, but then laughed, his stance relaxing. “You know what? You may be onto something here. Mind if I call you if it is, ah, suitable?”

He had not been exactly serious about it but, why not?

“Please do, my friend. But now, breakfast!”

 

\---

 

The world looked much, much better with a full belly. And even more with two cinnamon doughnuts safely packed in a paper bag.

“Computer, where’s Captain Amari?” Reinhardt asked to a panel on the wall, and it flashed her location in HQ’s map; her office, perfect. He looked at his reflection on the screen and ran a hand over his hair; the day he did not ensure he was presentable before going to see a lady was the day he would be dead and buried.

He walked through the corridors, greeting people here and there. He had met many people at HQ— enough to find someone to have a beer with in the afternoons if needed, enough to sometimes share his bed. But something strange had been happening during the past weeks— or was it months? He got deployed so much he did not even know anymore. Lately, finding someone to have fun and unwind for a while had been challenging, and Reinhardt did not know why. He was as handsome as he had always been and, if anything, he was stronger, fitter.

One lady he knew pretty well scurried past him barely waving at him— and it was the third one that did it that morning.

“Emma!” He called her, and she stopped suit, her chubby frame unable to hide the tension on her shoulders.

She turned around, though, a small smile on her face as she pushed her glasses up.

“Hey. I’m busy, can we--?”

“Just have a question! Quick one, really,” he smiled, putting a hand on his hip. “Do you--”

“I can’t! Sorry!”

She ran away. Literally. She ran down the corridor and left him hanging. Reinhardt turned around to see if there was a big predator behind him —A lion! A dinosaur!-- but actually, there was nobody else around.

Damn it, what was wrong?

He stopped by a column that had a polished metallic surface and looked at his reflection. He was not running around naked. He also looked practically like any other morning, though more tired. His hair and beard were as neat as ever. He smiled at the wall, and it showed him back his perfectly aligned teeth.

There was nothing scary or horrible about him that he could notice. Reinhardt scratched his beard and resumed his walking. This was something he needed to investigate, even if he did not know where to start doing so.

He could try to ask more people around. Maybe he had done something wrong, unwillingly? The guys he sat with during breakfast did not seem concerned so, at least, it was only something pertaining the ladies.

Maybe he could ask Jack. He had a sixth sense regarding women.

Ah, but there was Ana’s office door, right in front of him at last. All right. Reinhardt looked at the doughnut bag that he had been carefully carrying and reviewed the plan. He would get there, praise her hair and her beauty, then engage in silly conversation while at the door. Nothing awkward, nothing that could be misinterpreted. The bag will be out of her sights at all times, until it was time to show her his hand.

Then, and only then, he would give her the present while emphasising it was a gesture of gratitude. That was it.

Maybe he was being ridiculous, but she had been absolutely adorable last night and it was the first time he gave her a present; he did not want to screw up their relationship over a trea—

The sound of something hitting a surface hard made him look straight at the door. There was an argument. His eyebrows twitched as he recognised Ana and Gabriel’s voices, and he rushed into the room.

Both Gabriel and Ana turned in surprise when the door slammed on the wall, their hands already at the gun holsters they were thankfully not carrying.

“Hey,” Reinhardt raised his left hand as a greeting, keeping his right one hid behind his back. “Oh, sorry! I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

He grinned, trying to give his cheerful and honest posing a better chance, but his friends were burning him up with their glares. They looked worn-out, unhappy. Angry.

“Did you need anything, Reinhardt?” Ana asked curtly, so different from last night that he felt compelled to punch Gabriel to the moon.

“He probably was looking for me,” their Commander straightened, the tension on his shoulders dissipating somewhat— or maybe just changing places, for he was now looking at him as if he was about to go for his throat. “I’ve heard you wouldn’t mind taking me down at the gym.”

Oh, Jack had wasted no time.

“I don’t mind fighting anyone,” Reinhardt said, his smile sharpening. “Anytim--”

He had not even finished talking when Gabriel threw a punch to his ribs-- and, no, he did not hold back. Reinhardt parried the attack with his forearm, but almost did not manage to block the second punch in time.

“Hah, all bark, no bite,” Gabriel grinned, taunting him with a gesture of his hand. “Come on.”

Paper bag and all, Reinhardt made fists with his hands. Gabriel was faster than him any day, so he had to wait for his overconfidence to make an opening for him. Which always happened, if Reinhardt was patient enough. He just had to watch it, even if that meant--

“Gabriel!” Ana hissed through her teeth, grabbing him by one ear and pulling him back to a chair in front of her desk. “I’m going to kill you. And you,” she pointed at Reinhardt, burning a hole through him with her glare, “get out of here if you want nothing.”

“Nothing that cannot wait,” he smiled nervously and took a step back, hitting the door frame with the back of his head. It was only then that he remembered to duck. “I’ll catch up with you later, _ja_?”

She only made thin slits with her eyes, and he closed the door on his way out.

Ah, Ana was pissed off, but she would definitely kick Gabriel in the nuts if the need arose and would not have second thoughts about it. Good. Despite knowing this --and he already did before entering her office in the first place-- he stayed by the door, listening.

He sighed, pulling out a squeezed, no-longer-round doughnut from the crushed paper bag and ate half of it in one bite while stretching his bad leg. Standing up ached, so he leaned in the wall and ended the doughnut’s agony.

He loved how Ana could be sometimes like those Jekyll and Hyde characters, even if he loved it even more when she was relaxed and laughed.

Sometimes she looked at him in a way that made him melt inside, like she did last night. Her golden eyes softened-- not as if she was making bedroom eyes at him, but with genuine affection. He could, of course, be delusional about the whole thing. Probably was. Damn, but were the doughnuts good!

Reinhardt looked at the brown bag. He should probably buy her three doughnuts to compensate for meddling in her discussion with Gabriel— but that would be too much. Maybe two and some Apfelstrudel? The one his mom used to make was delicious, that was one of the few things he remembered of her, but the Swiss recipe did not make it justice.  If only—

The door opened, and he found himself looking at Gabriel in the eye, who immediately sported his patented know-it-all smirk.

“Hah. I knew you’d still be here,” he snorted, closing the door. There was a dangerous fire in his eyes despite his smile. “Ready for round two at the gym?”

No, he was not. His knee would put him at a clear disadvantage. Not to say, he would screw it and his hand even further. No, he would not give him the satisfaction of beating him. Not today, at least.

“Busy, as you see,” Reinhardt frowned, finishing the last doughnut. “Not in the mood to fight, now.”

“Ah, just like in France,” Gabriel cocked his head. “And screwing up as much as then. Yes, don’t glare at me,” he pointed a finger to him. “I know what happened, now, and you didn’t say something was troubling you. You didn’t ask for help later. And you haven’t check in Med Bay today despite being unfit for duty.”

“I’m not unfit for duty,” Reinhardt offered him a small, strained smile.

“And when would you consider yourself unfit, then? When you get us all killed?” The Commander’s dark eyes bore a hole through him, and Reinhardt gritted his teeth so hard his jaws hurt.

The next he knew, he had grabbed a fistful of the other man’s t-shirt and was pulling him up to his toes. His right hand was ready to punch him square in the face, but the pain of squeezing his fingers was a tiny beacon of reason in his mind.

Not because he would hurt his hand, though. Screw it. His only worry was that they were in the corridor, in front of Ana’s door, and she would get angry at him again.

Gabriel ran a hand over his goatee, and that was the only thing that betrayed he was thinking his next words twice before saying them.

“I’m just saying that screwing your team like this is not your style, man.”

“It’s more yours, right?” Reinhardt snapped, letting him go with a shove. “Not communicating with the team, getting out of sight of everyone, jumping into the enemy, being sick and not telling anyone--”

“I’m not sick,” Gabriel raised an eyebrow and paced in front of him with slow strides. “And I’m your Commander; I do the finger-pointing, here.”

“Of course. Sorry, I forgot my place. The sheer irony of all this got me confused.”

“Ah, stop being a pain in the arse,” he rolled his eyes. “I know yesterday I rubbed salt on the wound, but cut me some slack. I didn’t know you were such a grudge-holder.”

“Me,” Reinhardt glared at him. “Who started a fight in Ana’s office?”

Gabriel’s mouth curved into a cheeky smile that did not touch his eyes.

“Yeah, we better go to my office before she kick us both to the Moon,” he snorted. “We’ll discuss more there.”

“That an order?”

“Does it need to be?”

“I don’t want to talk more about this. I know what I did wrong, and I already have a plan--”

“Then, it is an order,” Gabriel shrugged, but his voice came out sharp, hard. “Get moving, or you’re giving me laps around the building until you fall to your face, and _then_ we get moving.”

“Why? What’s there to discuss?” Reinhardt let go a long-suffering growl and started walking. “If you’re sending me to the counsellor, then do so already.”

“Oh, no, not yet. You interrupted us grown-ups while we were talking, so--”

“Talking? You were yelling at Ana.”

“She was yelling at me. Very different story. Very common, too.”

That made Reinhardt snort. He would have laughed if he was not dreading the conversation they were about to have. Or about to try to have. Gabriel would not beat around the bush like Jack, and he would probably be the worst person to have a heart-to-heart conversation ever, if Reinhardt was inclined to it. Which he was not.

“Actually, it was such a party, I’m actually glad you crashed it,” the Commander continued. “She was delighted about me not telling her about my condition, for yelling at you, for flanking the Omnics and, last but not least, for saving your arse from the Bastions….”

“ _Ja_ , don’t jump in front of me like that next time. They could have killed you.”

“Shall I let you die next time?”

“As much as it pains me sometimes, you are the Commander--” He oofed the end of the sentence when Gabriel punched him in the lower ribs, glaring. “It’s true. The world needs you to win the war.”

“They need all of _us_ to win the war,” he grunted. “You will live enough to woo Ana and make me win my bet with Jack.”

The bet. It was preposterous that they had bet money on their relationship. Reinhardt had been angry at them at the beginning, but he had grown to place hope on it. If Gabriel, scheming and calculating as he was, bet that it would happen… Well. It sure must mean something, right?

Just, Reinhardt could not see how that was bound to happen, just like he could not see where they were heading.

“Your office is not this way,” he mentioned when they got into the elevator.

“Very perceptive,” Gabriel pressed the button for the ground floor and stared at the closing doors. A moment later, he rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck, and Reinhardt had the certainty that he was about to jump any second, now.

At him. In the elevator.

It would make for an interesting fight. Space constrained, no weapons, and with the additional risk of making the whole cabin fall down the shaft...

It was not going to happen, though. _Probably_. But there was something to do with the way Gabriel carried himself that gave that idea of a predator-- and it was not new.  Maybe Reinhardt should have noticed something was going on, but the Commander had not been exactly accessible in the last months-- oh. Maybe this was why. But, well. If Ana did not know about his problem, what chance did he have?

The elevator dinged, and Gabriel walked out first, heading straight for Med Bay. The moment he opened the large white doors, a nurse was there to greet them.

“Mrs. Handsan, I was hoping to see you,” he made a gesture.

“Glad to see you could make it, Commander,” she said, walking by their side. “This is for you,” she produced a small container with the mark of Med Bay on it from her pouch and gave it to him. “You also said you were ready for the test?”

“No, not me. The Lieutenant will assist you.”

“Will I, now?” Reinhardt cocked his head. He did not mind helping any day, but he could feel in the air that it was a trap. Not that the nurse wanted to mess with him; he knew her, she was kind --and not exactly into men. It was Gabriel he did not trust.

“You will, yes,” Gabriel snorted, but there was a tiny smirk on his lips. “But I will stay with you so you don’t freak out.”

“Are you trying to scare me?”

“ _Perhaps_...”

The nurse sighed and made a gesture with her hand.

“Follow me, please.”

They entered a small room; the only furniture visible were two cabinets placed in front of a flimsy-looking stretcher. There was a light, too; a security camera, the likes of which they used in the corridors.

Before Reinhardt could even ask why they needed a security camera in a room, the nurse plunged a syringe in his right arm and gave him a shot. No warning, no words. Nothing. He took a step back on instinct, feeling his arm burn.

“Ow, that was not--”

A trail of fire moved from his arm to practically everywhere, and he leaned on the stretcher with a gasp. Its wheels screeched at the weight, but it held-- which was good, because he could not move anymore. Or breathe, for that matter. His heart started beating with such strength it hurt, his mouth dried up, and all his mind could think of was how embarrassing would be to die due to a prank instead of in battle.

Because he was going to die. _Right there_.

“That’ll pass in a moment,” he heard Gabriel’s voice in a haze, and he was actually right.

The blazing left a tingling sensation on his muscles, but they responded again. Reinhardt gasped for breath. The air stoked him like a furnace, and he made fists with his hands. He felt incredible. The soreness of his muscles? Gone. The aching on his knee? All but a foggy memory at the back of his mind. He could do anything! Run a mile in ten seconds, lift an elephant. _Any-fucking-thing_.

He turned around to see Gabriel swallow the contents of his med container but then, almost as if the clock had turned back the past six seconds, he wheezed, stumbling up to the wall as his vision clouded in a white haze. Tiredness draped around him, his limbs heavy as if they were strapped in rocks.

“Yeah, I know. Crashing sucks… We are working on it.”

The door opened, and he just noticed because he was standing right by it. Small hands touched him here and there and then patted his arm.

“You did good, Lieutenant,” she said, pleased. “Now, take it easy for some minutes. You’ll be just fine when your blood pressure stabilizes.”

 _Ja_ , just fine. He was _this close_ from passing out. Embarrassing. So embarrassing.

“Take a deep breath, man,” Gabriel leaned on the wall by his side and grabbed his arm, pulling at him sideways. The motion almost sent him to the ground, but the Commander held him up with his shoulder. “It probably would be better if you sit down, really.”

 _No more moving, ever,_ Reinhardt wanted to say, but he did not dare just yet. His vision was returning, and he could feel the warmth radiating from the other man and the slickness of the wall under his hands.

He managed to turn his head at him, and noticed it was just the two of them in the room, again.

“How’s your leg, now? Any better?”

It was difficult to feel anything when his body was pumping adrenaline like crazy but, as his heartbeat stabilized and he could stop panting like a dog, Reinhardt realized his knee was bothering him way less, now.

“What was that?” He panted after what felt an eternity, making fists. His forearms tingled softly as he squeezed his hands, and he could feel every single muscle on his body. At least, he was not dead. And he had not fainted. Not that he remembered.

“It’s an experimental drug we are making. We call it _nanoboost_ ,” Gabriel said. “Gives the lucky recipient a burst of energy via a bunch of self-destructing nanites. The body can use the extra energy they generate to heal or over-perform as required. As for now, yes, using it kind of sucks, which is not exactly what we need for combat operations.”

“ _Sucks_ doesn’t make it justice.”

“Well, we’ve not tested it yet in normal humans --well, other than you, but you hardly qualify,” he shrugged. “Good to see you didn’t drop dead.”

Reinhardt peeled himself from the wall slowly, not fully trusting himself yet, but his legs held. He stretched, feeling just fine. Way tired, but fine. He looked at his hand and noticed half of the cuts were now scratches.

Impressive. Why did Overwatch not use it for healing their operatives, then? Other than cost, of course.

“Wait. You said it could have killed me?” He realized, eyebrows shooting up.

“I was _joking_ ,” Gabriel rolled his eyes in a very theatrical way. “Unless you get a double dose or you have a heart condition to begin with,” he shook his head, making a face. “Ah, come with me. I’m not done with you yet.”

Reinhardt walked after him and realized, not without dread, that they were getting into another room. He felt weak and was _starving_ like he had not eaten in a day; he was hardly in any condition to partake into more tests, even more if they were going to be as strenuating as the last.

“Are there more tests?” He asked, hoping his voice concealed his worry.

“No, not until next week,” the other man leaned on a table and took a deep breath. “You’ll get all the details in your datapad soon enough.”

“What? You don’t mean--”

“ _Yes_ ,” Gabriel’s shoulders shook a bit as he chuckled, though he sounded strained. “I can’t play the guinea pig part anymore, the drug doesn’t play well with my condition.”

Grand. Just grand. Reinhardt rubbed his face with both hands. Shit. And he said _every week_.

He was going to die in a lab, far from battle. Without his armour. Like a _rat_.

“Don’t moan. You’re the best suitable to continue the tests. Hopefully, the hospital and Overwatch will bring nanites for everyone when the war is over. We just need to help that--” Gabriel stopped talking as if he had just had a huge realization.

Just, it was not that.

He doubled over with a pained gasp, eyes squeezed shut, shoulders dissolving into swirls of black smoke. He held himself on the table and dry-heaved violently, as if he was coming undone from the inside.

“Bloody _useless--_ ” He groaned, tumbling sideways and holding himself on a wall.

Reinhardt went after him, reaching out in time to put an arm across his shoulders when he was about to fall to his knees. The solid-yet-moving smoky quality of his flesh almost freaked him out; watching it was one thing, but experiencing it— holy shit.

“Hang in there, I’ll call someone...”

“No!” The Commander snarled, slapping Reinhardt’s arm away and leaving behind a black trail in the air. He circled the table and hold himself on it again, breathing hard and solid enough to crack the plastic surface with his bare hands. “It’ll pass. Talk to me. Now!” Gabriel growled among teeth, the desk cracking ominously in the background.

Reinhardt looked around. The way the Commander was writhing and burning everything with his glare made him think of a rabid animal, hurting and despairing. He thought of getting out and look for help-- but the door was bolted from the outside. Another camera spying on them made him think this was not an accident, either.

“Fine,” he sighed, resigned to play along. “What do I talk about?”

“I don’t care! Just talk!” The Commander gasped, doubling over again. “AnythINGNNH--”

Reinhardt’s eye travelled across the room as he tried to think of something that could distract his Commander. The room was larger than the previous one, but it had a chair and a bed, this time. And some shelves. It almost looked like a spartan version of his own room.

The camera had a red dot underneath it, and he made a face. Computers never made for good stories. Robots were absolutely out of question, bloody things. Gabriel hissed and groaned in pain, and Reinhardt rubbed his thighs with the heel of his hands.

It was not the first time he had been in this situation, if he did not take the swirling smoke into account, and it was nothing he wanted to remember. Yet, he could not help himself.

Reggar was an absolute dumbarse that had the most stupid ideas possible. He was hilarious to be around, and one of the few people capable of infuriating Balderich.

Reinhardt squeezed his eyes, wishing his last moments away from his mind. It did not work, and Gabriel did not help matters-- but, sometimes, remembering better times did.  

“There was a place in Bavaria, you know, the bit that used to be a forest at the south of Germany,” he grabbed the only chair in the room and sit near the door. “When I was posted there, it was common to see bears and wolves and… It was a nice place,” he said, stretching his back. It had been nice before it was levelled to the ground by the Bundeswehr’s missiles, rockets, plasma guns, and the Omnics. “Anyway. There was this little village where a candle was always lit. _Always_. Being the bunch of curious guys we were, one day we asked the elders and they said the candle marked the place where the last werewolf of the region was killed. Of course, we laughed our arses off.”

“That’s all you could think of? A monster story?” The Commander’s voice trembled, strained, but there was a hint of amusement on it. “I’d be a better vampire than werewolf, though.”

“Don’t laugh, I’m not making this up.”

“Sure…”

“The candle was there to prevent the werewolves from returning to the village, and the good people always took care of replacing it when it burned down. They kept it dry and protected from the wind,” he continued, “but they couldn’t really protect it from us bunch of idiots.”

It was Reggar’s idea, of course it was, and it was the best idea any of them had heard in a month. They did not go to sleep that night and sneaked out of Eichenwalde trying to conceal their footsteps and their laughter. Reggar tripped and broke his nose against the wall, which was even more amusing at the time than the werewolf story, and Johanna almost woke up the whole platoon when she mistakenly opened the cargo door of a gravel truck.

Those two always got in trouble, much more than Reinhardt himself, and that was a feat. So much, that when part of the castle’s battlements rained down on them due to ‘friendly’ fire, he knew exactly whose armours had been crushed beyond hope without even having to take their helmets off.

“Holy shit, man,” Gabriel’s voice brought him back after what felt a lifetime. “You ever going to continue?”

“Sorry, we--” Reinhardt trailed off, swallowed. “We put off the candle. Of course we did,” he dug his fingers on his legs. He hated not having one good goddamn memory that was not soiled by blood and death. “And then, we came back laughing only to find a pack of the biggest wolves we had ever seen. To say we shit ourselves is an understatement.”

“No weapons?”

“Just hunting knives. We rushed to relight the candle, got all the wolves into the village.”

“Shit.”

“The General almost kicked us out of the Army,” he let go a shaky chuckle and clamped his mouth shut to swallow the lump in his throat. They served detention for a week and were forced to help the villagers for a month during their time off in the worst of winter, but he could not manage to say that much. “Was fun.”

There was a moment of silence only broken by Gabriel’s heavy breathing. He stretched out like a cat would, bringing his spine inwards and his shoulders back, and sat on the table, looking at his shaking hands. The smoke was almost contained and, if anything, it flickered softly from his curls.

“Looks like it’s shit,” Reinhardt said when he trusted his voice would not falter. The other man did not need his stupid problems on top of the smoke.

“It is, when I can’t control it.”

“And when you can?”

“You saw how I took those Bastions down,” he snorted, a little smile on his lips. “Useful. Weird, but useful. And it’s not worse than the SEP program, anyway. I’ll live. However--”

He stopped talking, frowned. There was an awry look on his face, but it did not seem to be because of the pain, this time. He seemed unhappy. Maybe somewhat embarrassed, too? Reinhardt could not tell for sure.

“This time it was easy, and with these drugs I can more or less choose when it happens,” Gabriel continued at last. “But, sometimes, I need help to get it under control. And it breaks Jack every time he has to do it.”

Reinhardt may be drained and exhausted, but he heard the silent plea on his voice. It made him take a deep breath.

“Med Bay would only call you in those situations,” he continued. “On a normal day I can manage alone or with a nurse on the mic.”

Sigh. It sounded like shit, but turning his back to a challenge or someone in need was just not part of his nature.

“Do I get to punch you, though?”

“Only if you can make me solid enough, first,” he snorted. It was almost a laugh, but it was bitter, sad, and broken. “Now, how can I help you back?”

That took Reinhardt by surprise.

“I don’t need--”

“Don’t give me that shit. I’m not Ana, I’m not Torb. I can take you when you’re angry. I can fight you. We can train together if you rather bench.”

“It’s fine, really. Doesn’t happen this frequently…”

“It is a fucking order!”

There it was again, the smoking on his shoulders, the blackness on his eyes. It was terrifying to witness— yet Reinhardt felt something akin to sympathy diluting the resentment he held against him. Losing control of his body and his temper like that really sucked. Not to say how painful it looked, as well.

“Fine, you’re going to the counsellor the moment we’re out,” Gabriel growled, hiding half of his face in a hand.

“Aw, wait— Just… “ Reinhardt squeezed his eyes for a moment. “I can go with you to the gym, but it was--” Ah, damn. He did not want to say it out loud. But he told Ana about it. Should not be that horrible to tell Gabriel, should it, now? “The place, where we landed, it felt just like--”

Goddamnit. It was horrible. It fucking was, because Ana’s gaze was soft and caring, and Gabriel was judging him, and it made all the difference.

“Eichenwalde,” the Commander helped out when he stopped talking, and Reinhardt let his head drop. “I imagined that much. But I’ve never had a report about you that--”

He gritted his teeth all of sudden, squeezing his midsection once again, and Reinhardt made a face.

“Is this a matter of time? Can I do something?”

Gabriel fell on his knees and vomited a black mass that swirled the moment it touched the ground. Reinhardt grimaced. He had seen quite a lot of things in his soldier life already, but that was disgusting. The thing smoked and twirled faintly before dissolving in thin air, its blackness returning to its owner.

_Dis-gus-ting._

“Ughhh, fuck this shit,” the Commander sat on the ground, panting, and leaned his head on the leg of the table. He was pearled with sweat but, at least, it looked like most of the tension on his body had ebbed away.

Reinhardt was trying to remain inconspicuously silent, hoping the other man would forget what they were talking about, but his wrist datapad started beeping and blew his flimsy cover. It was Ana, whose jingly ringtone was the same for all of them in the team.

“You better pick it up. Don’t want her here, now,” the Commander grunted.

He tapped the datapad‘s screen and picked up the call, wondering why would she present herself there, of all places. Sure, she had superpowers, but that was far fetched even for her.

“Hey Ana--”

“Hey,” she said. Her voice was a bit lower than usual, and she did not seem angry any longer. “I was looking for you, and saw you’re at Med Bay...”

The look on Gabriel’s eyes said he would have cooed right there if he had not looked like a freighter had run over him and left him for the vultures. But then, he sobered straight away and mouthed ‘ _don’t tell her about me_ ’. Great.

“I, ah, I’m fine,” Reinhardt rubbed the back of his head. “I’m helping on a top-secret drug trial of… some sort.”

“You sure you’re ok?” Ana put so much emphasis in her words that Reinhardt could imagine her raising her eyebrows perfectly. “I’m in my room now, if you want a coffee. Or some food.”

Reinhardt almost choked on his own breath.

“ _Danke_ , I’m— I’m just tired,” he blurted, trying hard to find the proper English words. “Look, ah, can we speak later? I’m a bit in a tight spot, right now. Top-secret tight spot.”

“Sure... See you then.”

Ana hung up, and Reinhardt let go a long, long sigh.

“Gabriel,” he called, looking at the ceiling for a moment. “Did she just invite me over?”

The Commander laughed. It started as a chuckle, low on his throat, and then he guffawed, holding himself as he winced and chortled at the same time.

“But, I don’t understand. She’s being so friendly all of sudden--when you’re not involved, that’s it. Not that I’m complaining,” Reinhardt made a gesture with a hand. “But it’s _disconcerting_.”

And not only that. He was scared this strike of good luck would end as abruptly as it had started, but he would not share that bit with the Commander.

“All of sudden,” the other man rolled his eyes. “I can’t believe that you, from all people, have not noticed she likes you.”

“Ah, don’t jest…”

“I’m not, and her concern and her _invitation_ to feed you, just proves me right. I have even received complaints from quite many ladies in the base that feel intimidated by her if they approach you.”

“Oh? Is that why everyone’s running away from--? Wait, what??” Reinhardt looked at Gabriel as if he had turned into a Wolpertinger. Actually, due to his snarky, mischievous nature, chances were he may have been one in disguise all this time-- but he was digressing. “Stop pulling my leg, Gabriel!”

“I’m telling you I’m not joking, man,” he snorted. “She doesn’t look at Jack or me in the same way she looks at you.”

Reinhardt rolled his eyes. Fine, he had noticed her soft smiles, but it was not as if they were exclusively for him. Also, to think that she liked him better than two of her favourite people was too bold.

“Suit yourself if you won’t believe me,” Gabriel shrugged tiredly. “Guess you’ll see it for yourself one day.”

“Fine. Say, for argument’s sake, that I believe you and she’s liked me for a while,” he crossed his arms. “Why being start being friendly just now and not a while back?”

“Well, I don’t have the specifics. But Jack experienced a similar transition; at the beginning, Ana was also cold to him. She was ‘giving him space’, if you know what I mean.”

Yes, he knew it very well. And yes, things between Ana and him were better than they had been years ago, but what happened last night was extremely rare. Sure, she talked to him, they watched films together sometimes, got together on planned team nights, she asked him to play with Fareeha now and then… They had a cordial, friendly relationship, but that was it.

She had been keen to let him know when things got too personal between them, and— well. He sucked at discriminating what was too personal and dreaded her cold shoulders, so he did his best to stick to what he knew worked: work-related conversations, light stories, jokes, the odd hug.

That was why he treasured every time she got out of her way to chat with him, or to show him a film she had not seen, or to tell him about Fareeha. And yesterday, even if he had been plain horrible to her, she still—

He sighed. If only this friendly mood of her would last forever...

“One day she came around and they became _bestest_ buddies,” Gabriel continued. “But about why now, who knows? She’s still quite broken, and I think she doesn’t even under--”

“What do you mean, she’s _broken_?”

The Commander rubbed his face with his two hands, then let go a long breath.

“Why am I talking to you about Ana, again?”

“Because you’ve been a piece of shit to me and you want to make up for it somehow?”

Gabriel sighed, looking like an oversized rag doll leaning on the table, legs sprawled in front of himself.

“What I meant is exactly that. Or do you know a lot of people that cold and detached? It takes her ages to let anyone close, if she does. She’s absolutely terrible with people, worse than me— _yes_ , don’t look at me like that.”

There was a lot of truth on that. But some people were more reserved than others, and some people just needed their space and time alone. If anything, that was what Reinhardt had always thought about Ana. But, to say she was broken implied something bad had happened.

Something like--

“Ana told me she shared her story with you,” Gabriel continued, making a tired gesture with his arm. “So, by now, you should know about Sam. Captain Muramak, you know, the guy that came to visit Fareeha.”

“I do,” Reinhardt glared. To think he had had him within hand’s reach and could not use that opportunity to make him apologise to Ana made his blood pressure rise. “Why did you allow him to get into our base? You should’ve punched him to oblivion when he showed up.”

“Because we needed him,” Gabriel sighed. “And Ana needed to face him at some point. Better if she did it with us than alone, am I right?”

“That’s one way to look at it…”

“In any case, you must have realised by now how much what happened in Egypt screwed her.”

“Of course,” Reinhardt huffed softly. “She caused a lot of casualties. They were her friends. Her father, too, I think. That would change anyone.”

“That too,” the Commander let go a long, exasperated sigh. “But I’m not talking about that, exactly. ”

“Then?”

“Man, you are so dense, sometimes,” he frowned, rubbing his stomach. “I recommend you talk more to her, now that you’re in her good graces.”

“This is about Captain Jerk, isn’t it?” Reinhardt frowned. “He did something to her. On top of abandoning her and Fareeha, I mean, which is more than enough for me to take a flight to Egypt and strangle him with my bare hands.”

“There, there,” Gabriel got on his knees slowly and then leaned on the table to get up. He was pale, sweating, but in control of himself. Or, at least, he looked like he was in control. “In any case, don’t get yourself all hyped about your new status. It won’t give you any chance, at least, until the war is over.”

A chance? A chance with her? Reinhardt swallowed. He had not even considered that since-- he could not remember when was the last time he allowed himself to dream about that. There was only so much disappointment he could take.

Besides, even if she liked him more now, she did not like him in the way Gabriel was implying. No. That could not be possible because she was _clearly uninterested_ , as she had said it to him several times.

But...

“She won’t even consider it until she’s sure she won’t have to make that choice again. So, keep in mind you have a war to win next time you decide you’re too stubborn to ask for help.”

“I, ah-- Is not… _that_ ,” Reinhardt sighed, his shoulders dropping. “Going to the counsellor is useless, and I knew all of you would send me there straight away. I just need some time to sort myself, that’s all,” he gave him the best grin he could muster. “I manage quite well. Besides, it’s not as if we went to a castle every day, is it?”

Gabriel stared at him first in disbelief, then in annoyance. Finally, he shook his head.

“So, this is how you’ve done it? You’ve smiled your way out of the counsellour's grasp. They believed you,” Gabriel pointed at him. “And so did we.”

There was a moment of silence after that where the Commander looked unusually solemn and Reinhardt tried not to squirm.

“I’ll call Ana’s counsellor and you’ll go see him this afternoon,” he walked towards him with slow, unsure steps. “He’s very good at hopeless cases.”  
  
“No, no, no. Have you not heard what I said? I just need--”

“And I told you before, do you want to get us all killed? If not, you’ll give this guy a chance. Look at me. You think I like coming here and vomiting black shit? Think again, man.”

Reinhardt crossed his arms and grumbled, feeling a knot forming in his guts again. He did not want to talk to another counsellor. He did not want to talk about Germany, period. He just wanted get on with his life, get a present for Ana, and have eight hours of good sleep. Why was it so difficult to understand that the counsellor did not help with any of those?

Gabriel put a hand on his shoulder and leaned his weight on him.

“Come on, now. I’m doing this for your own good,” he said, wiping an imaginary tear off his eye. Then, he sobered again. “Don’t make me open a file and pull you out of the Strike Team. Understood? If not for yourself, do it for the team.”

“ _Are you just blackmailing me??_ ”

“Whatever works, man,” he shrugged.

Reinhardt felt the proverbial knife being plunged on his back and let his head drop. There was not escaping from this one, now.

“Fine. I’ll go, since I have no choice… But I don’t promise anything.”

He would still feel like shit, the counsellor would still not listen, would not _understand_ , and Reinhardt would find another way to get rid of his appointments. That, he could promise.

“Good boy,” Gabriel patted him in the shoulder as he walked towards the door, but he stopped when he was about to get out. “By the way, about our deal. It would better if you didn’t tell Jack. Or Ana. What they don’t know doesn’t hurt them, am I right?”

“Indeed… But, wait a moment,” Reinhardt made slits with his eyes, an evil half-smile painted in his face. “I think… _Ja_ . It is my time to blackmail _you_.”

“What do you want?” The Commander glared. “I swear I’ll kick you in the nuts if you try to talk me out of the counsellor.”

“Ah, no, it’s not that,” Reinhardt leaned on the chair and crossed his arms. “Let’s say I wanted to make a gift...”

 

\---

 

Many hours later, Reinhardt knocked at Ana and Fareeha’s door and swallowed as he waited, hands hidden behind his back.

Ana opened up dressed in a plain shirt and baggy trousers, and she was so cute when she was not wearing her uniform that he almost forgot to say hi.

“Hey. Wasn’t sure if I was expecting you at all,” she held herself at the door in a way that made dark hair spill over her shoulders, a little smile on her lips. “I am playing games with Fareeha.”

“Sorry, I got caught up--”

“Reinhardt!” Fareeha ran to the door and popped underneath her mother’s arm, a big grin on her face. “You came to play with us?”

He bit inside his mouth; all he wanted to do was grab them both in his arms and squeeze them against his chest. He could use a hug. Or two. Bloody counsellor had made a wreck of him, and he was still feeling like shit even after a really long shower.

In other circumstances he would have gone straight to the gym to blow off some steam but, due to the forsaken draining effects of the _nanothing_ , he was stuck in an emotional roller coaster without a way out.

He was hating every second of it.

At least, this guy had listened to him-- which was both good and bad, because he made him talk a lot about Germany and his memories. He had liked Reinhardt’s idea of using the holoroom, but he had also asked him to train before the marathon. And, to train, he had asked him to get acquainted with what felt bad and why.

Reinhardt had been tempted to send it all to hell, but he had to give the counsellor something; he had piqued his interest by proposing him a task that both sucked and had good perks.

He just needed to find the little courage he had left after the session.

“I came to bring cake!” He tried to grin, showing them the bundle he had been hiding at his back. Looking at it with huge eyes, the girl took the wrapping off to discover an uneven oval lemon sponge that was a bit burnt on the edges.

“You--” Ana babbled, her eyes almost as big as Fareeha’s. “You can bake, now?”

“I’m afraid it was a team effort,” he chuckled softly, feeling that the corridor was boiling hot all of sudden. The little Captain eased him from the sweet burden and ran inside with it among giggles. “I whisked the eggs and the flour; that was as much as I could do without causing a catastrophe.”

“That’s more than I can do,” Ana snorted, eyes down, but there was a little smile on her face. “What’s the occasion?”

“I wanted to thank you for yesterday,” he rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s just that, promise,” he continued when Ana kept on staring at him in silence.

“It’s—It’s very sweet of you. Pun intended,” her voice was somewhat neutral, but she seemed genuinely happy. “Do you--?”

“I also need to ask something of you,” he interrupted her. If she started talking about something else, he would probably lose his cool and the chance to make this work. “If you don’t mind humouring me.”

“Sure,” Ana nodded and fixed a rebellious lock of hair. “What’s up?”

“I, ah… I need to talk to someone about home and my team,” Reinhardt hooked his thumbs on his belt so he could squeeze it inconspicuously. His cheeks burned, and looking at her in the face was probing to be a feat of strength. “Was wondering if you would mind me telling Fareeha, since...?”

He trailed off when Ana’s eyes went down, her mouth pursed. She closed the door behind her, probably to keep little ears off their conversation, and leaned on it.

Shit. Shit, shit, _shit_. He was counting with her friendliness-- if she were to push him away now, he did not think he could come back again. Ever.

“Yesterday, I realised that— well. That you would not talk about what mattered,” Ana said with a sigh, surprising him. “I’m glad you did, in the end,” she looked at him in the eye for a moment, “but I’m sorry I pushed you into a corner. I’m sorry you felt you could not tell me.”

His heartbeat skyrocketed.

“Ana…”

“No, let me finish,” she snorted and crossed her arms in a way it looked she was holding herself together. “Thanks to my stupid ex I’m—I’m a control-freak. But, if we are to be friends, I need to let you be yourself. I need to trust you with this,” she made a vague gesture at them. “So you can come to me without fear.”

Her words lit a fire in Reinhardt’s chest, and it was so bright that it made the knot in his throat impossible to swallow.

He had dismissed Gabriel’s words because they were madness in the mouth of a mad man. But he was right-- and Reinhardt was going to kill fucking Captain Bastard really slowly next time he saw him.

“Hey?” She asked in a low voice, her small fingers touching his forearm. “Are you-- are you ok?”

“No. Shit day,” he wheezed, tears spilling down his cheeks. He wiped them with the heel of his hand, smiling like an idiot while he tried not to break down. Bloody counsellor. Bloody Gabriel. Bloody hell on a toast. “I-- This is great. Really. I suck at--”

Reinhardt was going to say _everything_ , but sniffled instead. Ana seemed to understand what he meant, though, because she patted his arm and continued:

“The one and only caveat is that, if you abuse my trust, I will strangle you with my bare hands and then I’ll eat your heart with a spoon. But I know you won’t,” she half-smiled, and he barely saw it through the tears.

He wiped his eyes again and grabbed one of her hands to squeeze it softly. He would hug the air out of her, but a reverence seemed more appropriate for this moment of solemnity.

“I won’t fail you. Promise,” he said in a tight voice.

“You’ve never failed me… This is on me. Sorry,” Ana said in a low voice, rubbing his fingers with her thumb for a moment before letting go. “But you promised me you’d tell me,” she hissed a moment later, poking his chest with a finger.

“I promised to tell you if I couldn’t be your friend,” he shrugged. His face burned, his hands burned. The very air was absolutely on fire, but he tried his best to ignore it. “And, I could. Poorly, but I could.”

“ _Please_ , complain next time,” she almost pouted, her shoulders dropping. “Give me a clue, at--”

“GUUUYS, come on,” Fareeha banged on the door. “There’s CAKE here!”

“Manners, _habibti!_ We’re talking,” Ana said, then let go a long sigh. “Can I offer you some cake? Don’t think I can keep her from bursting out for much longer.”

“Thanks, but I, ah, I’d be a horrible guest,” Reinhardt half-smiled, then rubbed his eyes again. Impossible as it felt, he still seemed to have tears to shed, even if this time they were not exactly of sadness. “I’d only upset Fareeha.”

Ana made her golden eyes into slits as if, all of sudden, she had joined all the dots and realized something she did not liked one bit.

“Do I need to kill Gabriel _again_? He promised me he would not--” she stopped herself in the last moment, pursed her lips, and took a deep breath. “He said he would help, but...”

“He forced me to see your counsellor.”

“Oh. I see,” her gaze softened straight away, seeping understanding and sympathy. They stood in silence for a moment, one in front another, until Ana continued. “You know, I keep a secret stash of spreadable chocolate for days like this,” she said in a low voice. “Best thing to improve your mood-- even more when spread on top of a cake.”

He could not help but chuckle at the idea of Ana stuffing herself with spreadable chocolate when life made her sad. She was too cute. She would also kill him with the tip of a pen if she was reading his mind right now, but her soft gaze was worth any death.

Ana wrapped an arm around one of his and pulled.

“Come on in. We’ll discuss about Fareeha and your stories when you’re feeling better.”

“You sure?”

She opened the door without a word, and pulled him in.

\----------------------

 

Bonus: Cake time with the Amaris:

 

And meanwhile, Reinhardt...

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I'm late publishing this chapter. It happens that I rewrote half of it during last week because it didn't feel right -- I hope it's entertaining now, at the very least.  
> Lot's of things happened! But things for Rein are going to be OK for now. He needs a break (from me, mostly). Also, I had a lot of fun writing Gabe, as usual. My headcanon is that he's been able to reaper around in some matter or form since the beginning, but his mutation only gets worse with time, which is when Moira intervenes. I guess we'll get to it at some point XD  
> Next chapter, let me just tell you now, is... Operation White Dome. Get ready.


	3. August 2053

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Operation White Dome. Pew pews and feels, that's all I've to say.

Ana had been hiding in a small room atop an old, crumbling hotel for days. It was the first time she was in Istanbul, and she was not sure she wanted to travel there ever again. It was unfair to think like that, provided she had seen nothing else, but she was  _ so bored. _

The job of a sniper was not exciting unless in combat; it was all about waiting, looking, being patient. Ana could pride herself in the latter, if only because she had to deal with both Jack and Gabriel on top of her usual duties as Captain, but everything had a limit.

Fortunately, her plight was about to end.

Someone knocked at the door which such strength that the old wood cracked—  _ someone  _ that would never ever learn what stealth meant. Ana sighed, grabbed the gun strapped on her thigh, and got ready.

She had set up a series of cords so she could pull at one of them and open the door while holding the gun at her head’s level— but there was nothing where she was half-expecting a muscular chest.

“What’s with the disappointed face?” Torbjörn growled, hands on his hips, way below than where she was pointing at.

“Hey, Torbjörn,” Ana put the gun down in its holster and made a gesture for him to come in. “Did you bring food and water?”

“Reinhardt is taking care of that.”

She closed the door and took a deep breath. The small room had a couple of windows, one on each side of the building, which was the reason she chose it in the first place. Ana had two rifles set up on tripods, one on each of the windows— but she still could not see the German.

“Stop worrying,” Torbjörn left a heavy belt of tools over a dusty table, and the sound made her look at him askance. “He’s a big boy. Besides, he can mingle in a crowd if he wants to.”

“In a crowd of giants, maybe,” she said, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. He was way too recognisable, way too easy to follow. “Did you find a safe place for our troops to land?”

“Ah, yes, of course,” Torbjörn snapped his fingers, then checked on his pockets for his small but heavy datapad with a tin can sticker on the backside. Its drive was encrypted, and all the communications required three symmetric cipher keys stored in a card that was almost bigger than the datapad itself.

Torbjörn showed her a map of the city on the screen. Their aircraft should not have any problems to get close to their little red dot by the sea— provided the Omnics did not have seafaring anti-air guns, of course. The Hagia Sophia was the big rectangle just by their hideout, easy to spot.

“Here seems a good place,” he touched the screen, which then displayed the coordinates and the name of the street. He would never say where it was out loud, in case there was someone listening to their conversation. “There’s a good area over here, too, which is not far away,” he touched another point. “I’ll send these to your datap--”

The door almost dissolved in a cloud of dust and eaten wood after a single, powerful knock, and Ana sighed in relief.

“See?” Torbjörn snorted and went to open the door while she grabbed her gun again. “What did I tell you?”

The door creaked as it opened, miraculously still in one piece, and Reinhardt ducked to save the doorway, a smile already on his lips.

“Hello, my friends!” His voice boomed on the small room, but neither that nor his ever-present smile made Ana stare—  his attire did.

Sandals. Shorts that looked like they had been cut out not very carefully from a pair of skinny trousers. Sunglasses and a tank-top hoodie zipped up to the collarbones. On his back, a large military-green bag that had a sleeping bag strapped to it. His hair was dishevelled in uneven spikes and his pale arms were pink— just like his cheeks and nose.

Ana put the gun down, uncocked it, but failed to put it in its holster for three times. The next she knew, she was being squeezed in a bear hug.

“Ah, Ana! You are looking as lovely as ever,” he said, his head against hers for a moment. Then, the German left her on the ground and turned to bump fists with the engineer. “Torbjörn! How’s Ingrid? Little Frieda’s not born yet, right?”

“She’s fine, and no. Not yet. And don’t start with the names again!” Torbjörn grabbed his beard and pulled at its ends. “Ana, please, stop him. He only listens to you!”

“He listens to nobody,” she snorted and shook her head. Reinhardt put his hands over his heart, pouting.  “It’s true. How many times have I told you not to charge in?”

His laughter echoed on the room, and Ana found herself smiling. The last months had been something else. After they destroyed the last omnium in January, the war was ending. The last God program standing, Hermes, only had whatever units were still operative, and both Jack and Gabriel had been working tirelessly to contain it. Once Overwatch found how to keep it under control, it would be definitely over.

For now, Gabriel had sent every other member of the Strike Team to act as peacekeepers in recently liberated countries; A lot of people were on the edge, and the UN wanted to avoid the genocide of peaceful Omnics. While Ana had seen the Swiss HQ frequently to keep tabs with Fareeha, Gabriel and Jack, she had not seen Reinhardt or Torbjorn in, at least, three months.

It had felt like an eternity.

“Ah, I’ve missed you,” Reinhardt chuckled, echoing her thoughts, and put down the large backpack he was shouldering before sitting down on the ground. “Let’s celebrate our reunion with some nice food!”

The room filled with the smell of spices and sour cream as he unpacked a bag containing a handful of kebabs and, for a moment, she found herself transported back in time. Eating on the ground was an Arab tradition that Ana had not practiced since she was a little girl, one she would rather not partake in that wrecked hotel room with the old, stained rug-- but the only table was in no better condition, nor she had the means to clean it up.

“I heard water was less than ideal, so I brought tea instead,” the German produced two transparent bottles, one containing a red liquid, while the other one was dark, and Torbjörn looked at him as if he had grown another head. “Black tea for Ana. Apple tea for Torbjörn and myself.  Ah, stop growling, I know you don’t like it, but that’s all there was.”

“Pah. Next time I’ll get the supplies!”

“Sure,” Ana rolled her eyes. “But for now, keep an eye on that rifle, would you?” She sat on her legs, trying not to think about what the rug under her had seen and lived through. “I’ll watch the other one.”

She would not lose three days of trying to spot Omnics to a meal, not at all.

Their mission was to destroy an armed Omnic cell entrenched inside the Hagia Sophia. Though filthy, the hotel was in a privileged position; the building to their right was a fantastic construction around 1500 years old and almost the size of a football stadium. Its main body was crowned with a grandiose white dome and surrounded by smaller domed constructions and minarets— or what was left of them. The war had not been kind to the museum, as it was obvious by the piles of rubble, graffiti, and yes, the Omnics that were using it as a base.

Why had they used it, though, Ana could not guess, but it was time to kick them out of there for good and let the Turk people continue with their lives.

This was one of the last known cells that remained active across the world.  _ Across the world _ . It sounded impossible— and would have been impossible to achieve, if not because of the omnium plans that gave Overwatch the insight to turn the tide of the war.

Ana took a mouthful of her kebab and was instantly delighted. The meat was tender and savoury, and the yogurt was sour enough to make it all blend nicely— sure a sign that the city had begun recovering already.

Peace was at reach, at last. Ah, it did not feel real.

“Did you meet with Sarioglu, Reinhardt?” Torbjörn asked him while eyeing his food, unconvinced. “I’ve been waiting for him to send the intel about the anti-air guns.”

“Ah, yes. We had dinner together just--”

“Wait, so you had dinner and still bought this much food?”

“Well, our Turkish friend almost lives on air! I’m still hungry!” He frowned, then devoured half of his kebab in two bites. “Anyway, yes. He could not make the encryption work, so I asked him to mark the turrets--”

“Not turrets. Anti-air guns!” The engineer interrupted again, making him roll his eyes.

“The  _ whatevers _ , on my datapad.”

Holding the bit left of his food with his mouth, Reinhardt rummaged on the backpack again until he produced a datapad with a sticker of a flower on it. Ana bit inside her mouth to stop herself from laughing. Her own datapad had a ginger cat sticker. She knew the whole Strike Team had something or another, courtesy of her daughter, but Fareeha never said which sticker belonged to who, or why. The only thing she said, cryptically, was that it was so they remembered what was important.

What should ginger cats remind to Ana about, she did not know, but she was glad to carry a bit of her darling with her— just, she was not that little anymore. She and another lot of kids of her same age had overgrown the nursery by far, and Gabriel had to make for them a school. It was a temporary solution, Ana knew. They needed to see the world. They needed to talk to other people and socialise outside their Overwatch bubble, because Fareeha asking Ana to hang a poster of Reinhardt on her room was beyond ridiculous.

Once the war was over, they would need to think about the best course of action. Maybe Fareeha would fare best going to a boarding school, where Ana could visit on her free time. Or maybe Ana would not need to be deployed anymore and they could live a normal life as a normal fam--

“Ana, are you ok?” Reinhardt’s voice startled her.

“I’m— Was miles away. Sorry,” she put her hair behind an ear, embarrassed. “Thinking of Fareeha.”

The worry on his face melted into a smile, and he patted her knee with a big hand.

“Ah, you two would be back to your kiddies in no time,” he said, leaning back and rubbing his pink nose. A shadow crossed his eyes for a moment, but he was grinning. “They should meet sometime. Maybe when war is over Ingrid and the kids can visit. Ah, I know! We could have a barbecue— Jack’s always boasting about his grilling skills!”

“You’re eating and yet drooling about more food, you pig!” Torbjörn threw at him a piece of kebab bread to the face, and Reinhardt caught it in his mouth while in flight. Ana almost choked on her tea. “That a challenge? Want to lose again, old man?”

“Who are you calling  _ old _ ??”

They threw food at each other making wide parabolas to see who could calculate the angle better, all while Ana munched her kebab undisturbed. She knew, just like they did, that if she got just a breadcrumb on her, there would be  _ consequences _ .

Still, it made her warm inside to see them behave like children despite all the horrible things they have seen and lived through, just like she loved watching Gabriel and Jack bickering over who got to eat the last chip in the bag.

She should actually call Jack, ensure there was no last-minute change of plans and report back the intel they had gained— and she should call Fareeha. When Ana was deployed far from the base for a long time, she tried to talk to her daughter at least, before every mission. Knowing that Fareeha was good and safe always gave her peace of mind, helped her focus. And, in the event that Ana did not make it home, at least Fareeha would have a recent memory of her.

Ah, but to live together away from a military base. That was a dream come true.

As if Overwatch’s second in command knew she had been thinking about him, her wrist datapad flashed to life. The call was encrypted, and she had to provide both her fingerprints and a password to accept it.

“Hey, Ana,” Jack grumped a greeting. “How’s things?”

“Good, it’s--” the two guys yelled a loud  _ hello _ so Jack could hear them, and Ana almost laughed out loud. “Yeah, that.”

“So much for stealth.”

“It’s fine. We’re safe here,” she put her hair behind her ears. “Did you get all the intel?”

“Yes, the team is flying right now, ETA twenty minutes. I’m marking the landing spot on your maps.”

“Ah, I’ll be on my way there in a minute,” Reinhardt said, stuffing more kebab on his mouth like it was nothing and getting up.

“The local authorities have started the evacuation already, so it should be all clear for the morning job,” Jack continued. “Ah, the UN council had asked us to not to destroy the Hagia Sophia. It’s one of the few heritage sites that had not been levelled during the war.”

“Cannot promise anything,” Torbjörn waved a hand. “You know how much the Omnics like to entrench.”

“I do, indeed,” he sighed. He got injured in their last mission while they were destroying the last Omnic redoubt in Belgium and was still recovering despite the nanites and his super-soldier healing. “Foremost, be safe out there.”

He cut the transmission, and Ana watched Reinhardt pick up his bag and shoulder it again. They would split for a while; he would make sure everything was safe for landing, then Ana and Torbjörn would be on their way too to get some rest and prepare for the morning.

“Well, I’ll keep you posted. Bring the leftovers,” he grinned, and the door almost did not survive his strength when he left.

  
  


_ \------ _

 

The Hagia Sophia was, intrinsically, an open-plan squared museum with humongous columns, quite a high dome on top of their heads, and an arcaded second floor that offered views to the centre of the mosque. It was the worst defensive place possible-- or it should have been, if the Omnics had not erected so many wall-like constructions that it felt like they were in a maze. The arcaded second floor was almost more like a big corridor than a floor itself, planned this way by the last architect that dared to touch the wonder of the world so more people could admire its beauty. Yet, it was now crawling with things that could shoot at them; random Omnics, turrets and, at least a bunch of Bastion tanks.    


Yes,  _ tanks _ .

Ana was not naïve enough to think everything would go perfectly; nothing ever did. But really, deploying tanks inside the wonder of the world was the worst. It was not just the building itself, but the whole place was a museum-- the collections were still hanging around, since looters would never approach the place and the Omnics had no use for them. The last thing she wanted was to see more human heritage blown up and lost, but they may not have a way to avoid it.

It would have been easy to get inside the building with some good firepower, trench behind their barriers, and melt the Omnics, but the maze walls were electrified and made of a hard alloy their engineers could not melt or break through easily. Basically, they were playing the Omnic’s hand trying to salvage the building and its contents.

For now.

“Barrier won’t hold forever!” Reinhardt’s voice boomed in the comms as his shield protecting their front-line from the Bastion’s shells as they tried to squeeze at the wall. They were not exactly in the open— to their left there was one of the building’s stone walls, twenty feet to their right continued the maze, and covering half that the space over their heads was the second floor. Yet, enclosed spaces where the worse when dealing with explosions. “Need to kill that tank, now!”

“We are trying,” Ana said from the back, reloading her rifle for the umpteenth time already. “But they have a lot of firepower and we don’t have a barrier to cover us, here.”

The wall structures looked strangely organic despite the rough, sharp edges, and they were usually in the way of Ana’s shots. It was shit, because she needed the high ground to be effective, and they had not even reached the stairs up yet. Nor they would, if they could not kill the Bastions attacking them.

They were not expecting a massive amount of resistance-- and up to now, they had been progressing just fine. Of course, Omnics never made it easy for them, but the tanks made she think they were protecting something.

“We’re on it,” by her side, Torbjörn and his engineers were erecting a stationary half-dome to help Reinhardt protect them while they were in a strangely open section of the maze. Sarioglu had informed them of the interesting pattern inside the building, which was why the engineer had insisted on taking the additional barriers despite their weight and size. Ana was glad to have listened to him.

The blue and curved barrier, a replica of the technology in Reinhardt’s armour, hummed to life not a moment too soon, and the Crusader ducked and got under cover. Now that was sorted for some seconds —which was the time it would take the Omnics to destroy the new barrier— Torbjörn was getting one of his turrets ready, pulling parts from his oversized backpack like he had a bloody engineering supermarket there.

Ana hated Bastion tanks in particular because she did not know of any weak spots to exploit, unlike their turret counterparts— or any other Omnic, really. With a frustrated grunt, she shot a flimsy-looking one in the head and made it fell from the second floor. At least, their soldiers were seasoned and well trained; she could rely on them to make a dent on the enemy forces even in bad circumstances. It was a matter of time they would blow the tank to pieces.

“That sounds like trouble…” Torbjörn said. A moment later, Ana heard a sizzling sound. “What…?”

“Get away from here, now!” Reinhardt yelled, running in front of several of their soldiers and deploying his still cracking barrier.

“Why? What kind of trouble? What’s--?” Ana could only register a green glow coming from the second floor before a something hit Reinhardt’s barrier straight on, exploding on contact and breaking it to smithereens before sending the Crusader flying backward several feet.

The stationary barrier deployed several feet to the right absorbed the rest of the explosion before breaking, but the heat wave made Ana curl on her knees and hid her face on them. The air almost burned her throat, her eyes, her ears— and, for a moment, she could only think they would not make it. When the roaring stopped and she could look back again, the column she was using as a hiding spot was sizzling and part of the rock had crystalised. Several of their soldiers lying on the ground almost carbonised.

Shit.

“Reinhardt?” She called, and the German answered with a heartfelt groan. He was in all fours after having crashed into the building’s wall— which now sported a Crusader-sized dent. “Torbjörn, what the hell was that?” She asked, trying to spot the offender on the second floor and just seeing incoming bullets and walls. Walls. Of course, one of them must move to allow such a blast to go through.

“A plasma pulse, I think,” he said. “From quite a big gun. Nothing mine, thankfully.”

“Start thinking about how we deal with it,” Ana continued, then switched to the general comms. “Team, deploy all the stationary barriers. We won’t move from here until we clear up that tank and all the second floor in front of us.”

A second barrier just hummed into life. If their engineers hurried up, they could get the third one up before the second was completely gone.

“Torbjörn, half the systems are flashing red,” Reinhardt called on the comms after a while, voice strained.

“Of course they are red! You’re lucky if something works after getting hit face-first by plasma like that. If your barrier hadn’t repelled the incoming bunch of electrons, they would have melted through you!” The engineer growled, but then his voice softened somewhat. “Tell me they didn’t melt through you.”

“Not melted. Just got really,  _ really _ hot,” he sighed. “Can you fix my armour?”

“Circuits are probably toasted, so nope, unless I can replace them. What’s dead?”

“Shield generator, main vents, half the functions of the left hand, ah… And something else I cannot read. Too on the left of the display.”

The news made Ana want to pinch her eyes. It was not his fault, getting angry at him would solve nothing, yet she had to bit a curse. Fine. They would manage. Somehow.

“Torbjörn, try to fix whatever you can,” she told the engineer while recharging her rifle. “Give me some good news, if you can.”

She had not finished saying that when she had to roll on the ground to avoid a round of bullets. Her enhanced eyes saw their enemy even before she stopped rolling, and cursed inwardly.

“We’ve company at the rear!”

Three OR-14s dropped in the middle of their soldiers from the second floor, raining dead all over the place. It was lucky they were not Bastions, but the OR-14s seemed to have plating even on their led eyes, and their automatic weapon was no laughing matter, either.

“Did I say we’re in trouble, here?” Ana retreated with some soldiers, bullets flying around her as she ran to hide behind a corner. Heart thumping, she leaned the rifle on her knee and took a peek— and a shot. She hit one of the OR’s heads, blowing an eye to pieces— just, they had three more. And even blinding it did not damage them enough to disable them, most of the times.

Reinhardt was at the opposite side of the corridor, trying to cover the engineers with his body before they were annihilated. On top of it, their second half-dome barrier flicked at the umpteenth tank shell.

“Get to cover— find a corner, anywhere!” He yelled, covering his head against the bullets for a moment. Then, he swiped his massive hammer on the ground and fired a half-moon of plasma at the ORs. It was always more spectacular than effective, but things were getting desperate.

“Reinhardt, I don’t think there’s ever been a better time to charge…” Ana said, taking another shot. Her hiding spot was being constantly attacked, and the other four soldiers by her side were having a lot of trouble trying to divert the fire from the German and the rest of their troops.

“I can’t!” He said as he dashed forward, bullets mostly rebounding on his armour. One of the OR-14s was directly attacking him, its gun-arm pointing straight to his head, while the other two were walking over the corner where Ana was hiding— and not she or the soldiers with her had the firepower to stop them straight.

Soon, the sound of bullets firing and the Omnics’ servos were almost all Ana could hear. Someone yelled in the comms that their second barrier was down, and a tank shell exploded in the corridor, raining dust and shards all over the place.

She looked back; there was only corridor behind them, and they would not run fast enough under fire to make it to the next corner. One soldier fell to the ground with a cry of pain, and the next she knew, she had a gun to her face. A gun that was reloading just in that same moment.

Without even thinking, she hit the OR’s arm with the butt of her rifle. Had it been a person, she would have broken their nose at the very least, but the Omnic did not even budge. What it did, though, was unsheathe the sword hidden in its left arm, which glowed red-hot in a moment.

Shit.

Ana rolled on the ground again as it took a swing at her, covering her head instinctively with a hand as she got up; the soldiers with her were emptying their clips at the OR at such short range that the bullets rebounding on the plate were more dangerous than the Omnic itself.

And, suddenly, the OR was gone. On its wake, there was a rush of silver.

_ Finally. _

So much for not being able to charge, she snorted, watching them fly past her. The stone slabs on the ground were coming apart as they headed for a wall— Wait,  _ coming apart _ ? The OR-14 had grown more legs, if such a thing was possible, and was countering the Crusader’s momentum. The engine on his armour died all of sudden and they tilted dangerously before crashing.

Ana had to blink at the scenario. Did the OR-14 counter his charge, or did the engine died on him— maybe another casualty of the plasma pulse? Or maybe both?

The momentum made them roll on the ground in a ruckus of limbs and metallic noises, and she winced in sympathy; it was not a good day for the Crusader.

She cried out in surprise when the wall by her side was blown up to dust by the second-floor  _ friendly _ Bastion tank, and rolled away promptly away to avoid being hit by shrapnel. Her ears rang, hurting all the way down her teeth, and she hated,  _ really hated  _ explosions with all her might.

“We are sitting ducks to that tank!” Torbjörn exclaimed on the comms right after, and she wanted to strangle him enough to make his voice stop echoing in her poor head. It was obvious that the Bastion was a problem, yet there was still two OR-14— wait, where was the second one? A quick scan revealed it was lying in a pile of crushed parts on a side— parts their engineers were trying to salvage already. Good! The team may still live enough to see the next two minutes.

Ana shot straight to the head of the remaining Omnic. It was much easier when she was not under fire, being attacked with a blade, or shoot at by a tank. Much easier.

“Reinhardt, you need a hand there?” She asked, reloading and taking another shot. He had been awfully silent for the last minutes, though she could hear metal clanking at her back.

Her target fell to the ground when a very courageous engineer sliced through one of its rear legs with a plasma cutter, and Ana decided they could deal with the aftermath just fine. She turned around to help the Crusader finish his fight, and what she saw made her blink; Reinhardt had the OR-14 pinned on the ground and was punching it like there was no tomorrow, each blow sending sparks out of the twitching Omnic.

The OR’s head detached after a vicious, barbaric blow, and he leaned forward, hands on his knees, breathing heavily.

“Reinhardt?” Ana called, not moving an inch other than to stay as protected as possible from enemy fire.

The Crusader tensed for a moment and got up, grabbing his hammer on the way. Then, he brought it over his head on what it seemed a titanic effort and slammed it against the OR-14’s midsection, destroying the Omnic despite the poor grip of his left hand.

When he turned, holding himself tall and proud of his deed yet tired, he was still silent. His armour was dented in places, probably due to the two rough landings, had bullets lodged here and there, and sported several scalpel-like cuts on it, too— the most noticeable one, a diagonal line on his helmet that reached the visor and had cracked it. 

He stared in her direction for a moment, his shoulders relaxing somewhat, then smacked the helmet with a hand a couple of times.

“--hear me, now?” The audio was broken, he was out of wind, but his voice seeped happiness. Ana let go a breath she did not know she was holding. Shit. While he was smashing the OR-14, she thought he had snapped for good.

“Yeah, at last,” she nodded and checked her rifle. It was all set and ready to keep on fighting. Good. “Are you--?

“Oh, you two are alive?” Torbjörn’s gruff voice boomed on the comms. “I thought you were goners since we had to deal with the tank and the OR  _ on our own _ !”

“We were busy, here.”

“Hah.”

Ana looked at their team and saw the three barriers deployed and soaking Omnic fire. It looked like heaven, provided the Omnics would not shoot the bloody plasma thing again on them. On a second look, she noticed Torbjörn had moved all the barriers to the side; maybe he had figured out where the green bolt came from.

She took a bunch of shots to get the Omics to scatter or just plain  _ die _ , and Reinhardt and she rushed under the cover of their barriers. The Crusader slumped on the ground by the pillar where Ana had been hiding before —had he limped the last few feet?-- and Torbjörn appeared from nowhere holding a bunch of tools.

Their soldiers were protected behind the barriers, shooting up and down to keep the enemy fire to a minimum, and Ana felt a burst of pride. Good people. She would treat them when they made it home, she thought, getting her datapad and going one by one over all the security measures that would unlock it. It was time they stopped screwing around, wonder of the world or not.

“Main power supply is inoperative,” Reinhardt’s voice sounded distorted under his helmet. “And the backup one is almost depleted.”

“You are damn lucky to be alive, as usual,” the engineer sighed while touching the armour here and there. “Damn it, Reinhardt. Don’t get in the fire of a plasma cannon next time.”

“Hardly my fault…”

“Ah, Ana, grab his helmet, and pull when I tell you.”

Datapad just unlocked, she looked at the engineer with a raised eyebrow. It was not like he did not have minions to help him out, but they seemed to be assisting the soldiers and keeping the barriers operational. With a little snort, she walked towards them, pocketed the datapad for a moment, and put her hands on the sides of his helmet, her thumb tracing the line crossing it without even thinking. Once Torbjörn poked at her, she pulled the helmet up.

The German leaned his head on the pillar, smiling the moment he spotted her. His golden hair was sticking to his scalp with sweat and blood, and Ana frowned.

“Medic to my position, please,” she called in the comms as she parted his hair to check the wound.

“It’s just a bump,” he made a gesture with an arm, but that did not faze her. After seeing him destroying that OR-14 like a deranged savage, she better double check with a doctor. Just in case. “It was the wall. Or the floor. Not sure any longer-- ah, that probably hurts my case, doesn‘t it?”

Torbjörn opened up the armour’s chest piece, which made the German tense and flex his arms to keep the rest in place. He seemed to be in one piece, though surely bruised and sore. And he could not stop grinning like a maniac.

“What is so damn funny?” She snorted. As much as she was trying, she could just read that his happiness was not due to his usual ‘I’m having fun at cracking Omnic heads’. That involved more laughing, taunting, and flexing.

“Ah, let him be happy to compensate for both of us,” Torbjörn produced some strange pen-like screwdriver and used it to, apparently, take some readings. Ana looked at the Crusader, expecting an answer.

“I had, ah,  _ unfinished business _ , with the ORs,” he said, making a face. “You saw me charge it?”

“Yes. It did not look very effective."

“ _ Ja _ , that’s part of the  _ business _ ,” his smile wavered just  like she had seen it do many times when he talked about the past, but then it came back wider than before. He had come a long way since he started telling stories to Fareeha regularly, and she could not be prouder. “But now I know how to counter that, and it feels damn good to break them to pieces! The bastards. Wait until I get my hands on another!”

So, he was not insane, after all. Or, not any more than usual, at least.

“I don’t even know how you managed. The circuits to the main power supply are fried up, as I thought,” Torbjörn continued. “I’ve been looking for parts  _ as well _ while you had fun, but I don’t think I can fix it. What I may do is route the power that’s still on it to the backup generator— charge it up, so to speak.”

“It’ll overheat and the battery will end up melting,” Reinhardt frowned, and then half-winced as the medic poked his head here and there. “Now I still can handle the hammer, at least.”

“Pah,” Torbjörn snorted. “The charge almost dried up the backup generator for good— you’re running in the lowest power settings, it’s a miracle the gauntlets still work. And even if they do,” he continued, pointing at him with the screwdriver-pen-thing, “don’t think I don’t know you are powerlifting the hammer  _ plus _ the armour. You’ll throw out your back in the next three swings.”

Ana sighed and took the datapad back to call Sarioglu. While communication got established, she perched on a pile of half-broken of rubble that had fallen from the second-floor balcony. The position did not give her an advantage over the tall walls but, at least, she could help with the second floor better.

“Captain Amari. How’s things in the Hagia Sophia?” Their contact in the Turkish Resistance asked, his accent thick yet similar to Ana’s.

“The bloody Omnics are entrenched with a  _ plasma cannon _ , Sarioglu,” she growled, taking a couple shots. “They almost blew us up to pieces. Why weren’t we informed of it?”

“A plasma cannon? Oh, that’s— Well, we didn’t--”

“This will end poorly,” Reinhardt’s concerned voice made her turn her head towards them again. He was leaning forward to give Torbjörn access to his back, and the engineer was hooking a half-burned cord from the battery on the front to somewhere near the engine. “For me!”

“Ah, shut it. I’ve done this hundreds of times.”

“No, you’ve not!”

She saw the German roll his eyes to the ceiling with that exasperated expression only Torbjörn could get out of him, and then realised her comms were too quiet.

“Sarioglu?”

“I’m here. You stopped receiving me, I think. I said we are ready to assist you.”

“Good. Bring any barrier you have,” she nodded to-one in particular. “I’ll call you when ready. Amari out.”

It was not the best plan. It was not even a plan, yet, but they needed the firepower. Now, if she remembered correctly, the resistance had half a platoon of infantry more or less armed, plus a dozen rocket-launchers. Blowing the place to oblivion was not exactly what she was looking forward to doing, but it was definitely a way to get rid of that cannon.

“All set and done, you crybaby,” Torbjörn disconnected the now charred cord and almost shoved it in the Crusader’s face. Then, he pushed the chest plate together and hooked everything back in place. “Just don’t charge, or you’ll eat the battery again— and it will not survive a second recharge like this.”

Reinhardt got up with more ease and made fists with the armoured gauntlets —even though two fingers on the left hand did not move. The doctor had reported nothing to her, so he was fine. Still smiling, his hair curling so slightly now that it was drying.

“Understood,” he nodded, then put his helmet on. The cracked visor lightened up-- or part of it did, at least.

“I guess the barrier is still out of order?” Ana asked, making him turn towards her. He rolled his shoulders and picked up his hammer and, for some reason, she wondered what would be like perching on his back while attacking. It would probably be suicidal and  _ fun _ at the same time.   
  
“ _ Ja _ , sorry,” he said on the comms, and she nodded. It would have to make do.

“We need a plan to clean the rest of this place. I’ve called Sarioglu— the Resistance will come to assist us. Torbjörn, did you learn anything about the plasma cannon?”

“Well, I know one thing for sure. It is not like a plasma barrier-- it is not a projection of atoms in a grid that can be stabilised in a relatively small cell,” he said, knocking his knuckles against the Crusader’s armour. “It is a burst of furious, sped up particles, and that requires a lot of energy and cannot be kept in a battery, so to speak.”

“So?” Ana asked, frowning. She was not dumb at all, yet could not imagine for the life of her where the engineer was going with all that.

“So, the cannon itself must be large and also must use quite a big power supply. We don’t have intel about Omnics hijacking any electricity grid…”

“You think there’s nuclear reactor  _ here _ ?” Reinhardt asked, bewildered.

“Of course not,” Ana could imagine the engineer rolling his eyes. “But, if you notice the background noise, there’s a turbine somewhere that they may be using for their purposes. So, I bet their stupid cannon will take a while to charge up.”

“How much is ‘a while’?"

“I don’t know, between ten and twenty minutes. Probably,” he said, hammering rhythmically on the gun of a turret he had just built to make it straight. “Heh, this will keep them entertained for a while if they show their ugly mugs.”

“We don’t have long, then,” she took a deep breath. “We need to move, take the high ground. Doesn’t seem to be many of them left, there. Once up, we use Sarioglu’s rocket launchers to destroy any resistance at the back of the building.”

“What would you have me doing?” The Crusader asked, sounding chaffed.

“Help Torbjörn move the barriers. When that’s done and we engage, cover our rear and go get Sarioglu. We don’t want more surprises like the last one.”

“Roger.”

“Let’s go.”

With the pertinent orders, the team moved one barrier first. The walls were taller than Reinhardt, so adventuring past a corner was a lottery. The Crusader walked forward with the anchor points of one of their barriers and dropped them whenever he encountered a turret or an Omnic and, little by little, they moved closer to the stairs to the second level.

Finding so little resistance was getting on Ana’s nerves, and she was dreading the moment they would encounter a sentry-mode Bastion head-on waiting for them.

Because it would happen.

A pained grunt from Reinhardt and the unmistakable sound of a machine gun made her cringe. Jackpot. What she was not prepared for was for the Crusader to grab his hammer in his two hands, lift it over his head, and crush the Bastion to oblivion.

“Efficient,” she said in the comms, to which he just flexed his bulky arms.

“I’m so not fixing your armour this time, show-off,” Torbjörn pushed him. “Get moving. I don’t want us to be here when the cannon fires again. We’re still very much in its trajectory. That, if it cannot change places.”

Ana could not agree more. The good thing was, this was not an omnium. There were not  _ infinite _ Omnics there to attack them, and they must have taken down already most of the heavy hitters.

Several minutes later they had got out of the maze and on the staircase. Before Reinhardt could climb up the steps, the engineer grabbed one of his legs and knocked his knuckles against the armour.

“Wait, waaait a moment, Reinhardt,” he snorted, and looked for something in his backpack, producing a…  _ something _ . Rubbish, probably, with cables and broken parts. Then, he threw it up the stairs into the second floor.

There was a buzzing, and then, a flash of light and the zapping sound of several high-intensity lasers. What fell back to them was a fraction of what had gone up, burned up and perforated.

Reinhardt looked down at the charred remains that rebounded to his feet, and Ana could swear he was sweating.

“Thank you, my friend!”

“It’s nothing. I just  _ think _ before acting,” Torbjörn waved a hand. “Now, look at this and brace yourself for awesomeness.”

He produced a cube from his backpack that unfolded in several reflective panels. He was  _ grinning _ when he threw it up the staircase.

There was quite more buzzing and zapping, and also the sound of electronics frying up and sparkling. The mirror-like device came back down, rebounding on the steps and, when Torbjörn picked it up, it barely showed burning marks.

“Good boy,” he chuckled. “One more time, for the people at the back.”

He threw it back up, this time with more strength, and there was only a bit of zapping this time before the device rebounded back to them.

“Ok, it is  _ mostly _ safe, now. You can--”

Reinhardt was already trotting up, hammer in his hands, before Torbjörn could even finish speaking.

“Aha!” The German exclaimed, and there was a lot of cracking, crashing, and crunching noises that Ana ignored for the sake of her mental health. Their soldiers at the rear were still firing, since there seemed to be an unholy number of the most basic infantry Omnics coming at them from the high ground, but everything seemed to be under control so far.

Good. They may still pull this off without destroying the whole building.

“All clear,” Reinhardt came back almost without laser marks on his armour, and grabbed the anchor points of one barrier before getting back to the second floor. Part of what should be balcony was covered in organic-looking Omnic walls. And it was handy; the moment they showed up there, the Omnics at the back of the building shot towards their position. If Ana’s idea of the building was correct, they have got in the Hagia Sophia on the eastern wing, and they were now in the southern wing’s second floor. The enemy shoots should come skewed, which would also help them until they reached the eastern part of the second floor.

The only downside was that their team would be straight in front of where the plasma cannon should be. That, if it could not be moved on rails. Another surprise ambush would suck.

Ana cocked her rifle and sighed. At least, she had got the high ground. It was about time. Crouching on the ground, she tapped at her wrist datapad.

“Sarioglu, we’re almost there,” she said. “I’ll send Reinhardt to fetch you. Be ready.”

“Roger,” the Turk answered, and she cut out the communications.

“Reinhardt, go to the entrance, get Sarioglu and his team,” she said in the comms. “Don’t get up here with us just yet, hold your ground downstairs. Don’t want all of us in the same place, in case the cannon’s ready.”

“Understood,” he replied, leaving one barrier in such a way it covered an opening between walls. Torbjörn was already building a turret there, and a couple of soldiers were on their knees, shooting. “Will bring them close to the stairs.”

“Right. When you are ready, we swap out.”

The Crusader marched away, and she looked for a position from which she could watch his back. He should not find much resistance in his way back, yet she would not risk it. Not when half his armour was not working.

A couple of Torbjörn’s turrets kept on shooting rhythmically, and Ana missed being able to put on some music. It had been a long time now since she went on a mission with Jack or Gabriel being in charge, where she could relax and just  _ kill _ as she was supposed to do.

Well, she would have time to relax when the war was over.

“How are we doing?” She asked in the comms, and then received a trickle of information from their troops. Barriers were deployed, they controlled the front and back exits to their positions so far, did not have good visibility to shoot their objective, and had no sign of the plasma cannon. Good. But also bad. The notion that they were running out of time before it shot again was nagging at the back of her mind. “Keep your eyes open for any glowing. That’s our main priority after holding our position. Reinhardt?”

“Almost at the door, now.”

Good. The plan was simple. Reinhardt and Sarioglu would come back to them. They would hold their position down the stairs where there should be minimum resistance. Ana and Torbjörn would pick up the barriers and move forward, getting on the northern part of the second floor, where they would have direct visibility over the enemy and be under heavy fire. They would keep the enemies engaged while Sarioglu’s rocketeers get up the stairs and blast walls and anything in their way to the back of the building in a forty-five-degree angle.

While that was in motion, she would send Reinhardt, Torbjörn, and a bunch of soldiers further ahead in the second floor to deal with any remaining Omnic and the blasted cannon.

That should be enough to soften the opposition enough so they could get down there and finish them for good.

A tank shell made its way towards them, exploding in one of the Omnic-made walls making a hell of a lot of noise. The wall got a dent on it but it did not budge otherwise. Those shits were strong as hell, Ana frowned.

“Coming your way, Captain,” Reinhardt said on the comms, and she took a deep breath. Time for the fun.

At her command, the engineers grabbed two of their three barriers and moved them forwards, closer to the corner between the southern and eastern sides. Enemy firepower intensified the moment the Omnics had a better angle at them, but their soldiers could say the same thing. Ana kept her original position, lying on her belly while following the Crusader and now Sarioglu and his troops around.

The Omnics seemed to have built some extra auto-turrets that crawled on top of the walls, but they were easy to deal with. What was crap, though, was the tank firing at them. And the cannon. The bloody cannon.

“Everyone, ready to switch?” Ana got up once she noticed the newcomers were at the stairs and ran through the barrier to regroup with Torbjörn at a corner between both corridors. The engineer was building a couple of turrets, the backpack he was shouldering looking considerably smaller already. He gave her a nod while hammering

There was a bunch of “ayes”, and Ana gave the order to strike. If all went as planned, they would be back at HQ by night time.

She advanced with her team, keeping herself out of trouble and looking around to ensure the rest were doing fine. Soon, the noise increased to a horrible cacophony of explosions, machine guns, and shots of different types, and she really,  _ really _ missed her music when her ears started hurting.

Reinhardt got by her side, glanced at her briefly, and kept going to meet with Torbjörn. The engineer had put together a long-range weapon and was building it some legs from strange-looking parts.

“We need more firepower!” A soldier directly in front of the Omnics cried out, and a moment later one of their barriers blew up to pieces.

Ana frowned and looked around; the incoming fire came from below instead of from the front.

“Torbjörn, Reinhardt, you two go to check on the cannon. Fall back immediately if there’s any danger, understood? The rest, reinforce our position.”

She could barely hear herself over the explosions, but everyone moved around, so they seemed clear on their orders. Ana prepared her rifle again even if it was almost impossible to see anything among the dust and smoke.

“You five go with Captain Amari,” Sarioglu’s voice echoed among the noise. “The rest, keep firing!”

Good thinking. The engineers were rotating the barriers to make sure there was always one with some charge on it, but they took forever to recharge. Some rocketeers in the front line would help keep the Omnics at bay. 

They could do this.

A tank shell impacted on one of the big pillars of the building, making rocks and dust explode in all directions. Glass rained from the windows above, and Ana ran to get cover deeper in the corridor. A big chunk of rocks fell on the corridor, smashing it to pieces that crumbled down to the first floor.

Fuck, they did not have much protection against the bastards blowing the building up. Ears ringing, she checked up the damage; some of their soldiers seemed to have been caught in the landslide, and there was no way to cross to the side with the stairs easily. They were all trapped on the second floor, for now.

“Torbjörn, need you here to find us way to get down safely ASAP.”

“Can’t, now!” He squeaked. She glimpsed the Crusader’s hammer; they were fighting something, but that did not seem to be the problem. “Found the cannon and have bad news! BAD! It’s overloading!”

“Can you fix it?” Ana said, trying to remain calm. “Unplug it, somehow?”

“Can I smash it to pieces?” Reinhardt pitched in.

“No, NO!” The engineer growled, and Ana could imagine him checking up the cannon while bitting the tip of his tongue. “Reinhardt, try to turn it to the side,  _ carefully _ .”

Ana stopped firing. She stopped even looking through the scope and tried to find her friends. Thankfully, Reinhardt was always easy to spot, which also told her where the cannon was. She had a good idea of the destructive power, but not of the size of the beam. Would their barriers be able to contain it, cracking as badly as they were? Would they survive the heatwave?

“Won’t budge,” the Crusader grunted on the comms.

“Shit.  _ Shit _ . Get to the corner, all of you, curl under the barriers and  _ pray _ . I will blow it up before it overloads completely.”

“You sure? That sounds like something I would do…”

“Shut up and help me!”

Ana felt her throat drying. Ok. She trusted him. If blowing it up now was better than let it overcharge and blow up later on, they would go ahead with the plan-- even if all fibers of her body said it was nuts.

“Everyone, grab the barriers and come to the corner ASAP!” She called on the comms.

“What’s happening?” Sarioglu asked the moment he reached her position. “The Omnics are mostly done for, we should keep attacking.”

He blanched the moment Ana explained the situation to him.

“Got a fuse. Or something that would work as good as one-- but it’s short,” Torbjörn said in the comms, clearly talking to Reinhardt. “Can you take us away from here fast enough?”

“Of course! I’ll pick you up, run to the end, and charge down the hall. We’ll be under the barrier in no time.”

The moment he said that, Ana’s breath hitched. Then, she looked at their positioning and made sure there was enough space for him to brake while injuring no one. Shit. Could not believe they would eat a blast straight-on again.

“Ready!” Torbjörn cried out, and she looked around to see everyone was under cover. She hated this. Having everyone at the same place was such a  _ horrible idea _ that her skin was crawling. “Run FASTER, you big dope!!”

He sounded terrified, and Ana could not blame him. She looked around the umpteenth time to make sure the barriers were around them. The corner was protected by a pillar, too, which was taking most of the damage from the Omnics weapons.

“Brace for impact!! Cover your ears!!” She yelled on the comms when she saw the Crusader charging. He approached them at high speed carrying Torbjörn on his arms, the light on his visor flickering— oh boy, Torbjörn had said the armour had one charge on it, at most. She could only hope--

Her train of thought was absolutely shaken by a detonation followed by a huge blast. Not that she really felt it consciously, really. All her senses got overwhelmed the moment the sound wave made her squeeze her head on her hands as if it was going to explode despite the earpieces she was wearing for music and for  _ exactly this shit _ . The shock and heat waves came next, hitting their barriers and the pillar full-force. Ana curled into a ball, conscious of being squeezed, of the heat burning her throat, of the bits and pieces biting at her body. Rocks pounded against rocks, metal bent under stress, hissing, cracking— and then, the blast sucked her to her knees, taking her breath with it.

A cloud of dust engulfed her, making her eyes and lungs burn, but she was alive. Terrifying as explosions were, barriers seemed to make life much easier. Ana cracked her eyes open after a while, coughing. She noticed their team moving around her,  _ squeezing _ her as they moved and got up, elbows and knees sticking everywhere. Her ears hurt, though not as badly as they could have, and she could even hear something over the ringing.

“Recount, people,” she said on the comms, getting up. In front of her, the Crusader was curled on the floor against the wall, blocking most of the corridor. “Point the medics towards the injured.”

“Are we alive?” Torbjörn panted, appearing from between the large armour arms. “Holy shit, I thought we wouldn’t make it.”

Their barriers were down, the pillar that had sheltered them was charred and half-melted by the heat. It had cracked, it was displaced, and it was absolutely at the brink of collapsing— but it had held, and had protected them from the worst of the explosion. Which, to be fair, must not have been that big if they had escaped mostly unscathed. Torbjörn had made a great call; she would call it out in the mission report.

Once on her feet, Ana looked around to establish their situation. She could not help but groan. The building was missing half a side, now— well, not missing. It was in a big pile of rubble, just like the Omnic walls and everything in a good radius around it, so she had no hopes for the museum’s collections. The Board would not be pleased.

The only good thing was that a lot of that debris was on top of the Omnics, screw them. They were not shooting anymore and, hopefully, their troops could clean up any remaining enemies without problems, now.

“We get down there and secure the area,” Sarioglu told to his troops, “and then, we go home.”

There was a loud cheer, coming even from Overwatch’s troops, and Ana snorted softly. Yeah, she could do with a long shower. And Fareeha. She snorted softly and checked that her rifle was still loaded. Good. She would look over them from there even if they probably had neutralised all resistance already.

While his engineers were figuring out a way of getting them all down to the ground in the safest way possible, Torbjörn stopped by her side, arms crossed.

“I don’t like this. Omnics don’t self-destruct. They never stop fighting,” he said, and Ana could imagine him frowning even without looking at him.

“They played all their cards to surprise us, I guess,” Ana shrugged, and felt a myriad of aches and pains now that she allowed herself to relax. “Not the first time they blow up a place with them inside for the casualties.”

“Still!” He grumbled. “Could have more  _ cards _ waiting. We’ll get down there with the barriers, too. Just in case.”

“Sure,” she nodded. After all, they had only lasted this long against the Omnics because they had always been extremely careful.

Ana turned at the sound of metal smashing rocks, rifle ready-- but it was only Reinhardt kicking debris away as he walked, a true elephant in a china shop. He was carrying his hammer with both hands while his helmet balanced precariously in the hammer’s counterweight.

“Wait, look at that. There’s still power for the gauntlets to work!” Torbjörn said, hands on hips. “Hah, even I impress myself sometimes…”

“Are we ready to leave?” Reinhardt rested the weapon on the ground with a loud clunking noise and smiled warily.

“Nope, not yet,” the engineer waved a hand. “We’re going downstairs to check everything’s in order. And to see if we can find why the bloody things were entrenched here.”

“You need me?”

“Well. We can move the barriers without you, but the team would feel safer if you’re around. You know how they are…” He crossed his arms and cleared his throat, obviously not talking for himself. 

“Of course, my friend,” the German nodded and picked the hammer once again. “Let’s go.”

“Actually,” Torbjörn waved a hand, “stay here for a moment while we build a ramp down, eh? The fewer distractions, the harder we’ll work,” he said and left them for the engineering team, which seemed to be discussing the best plan of action.

Reinhardt let the weapon on the ground with an exasperated growl and Ana half-smiled in sympathy.

“You look tired. Perhaps you can leave the hammer here with me? Doubt you’d be needing it.”

“Ah, that’s kind of you, but I rather haul it while I can. That said,” he raised an armoured hand to rub the back of his head, “I can’t wait to get back to HQ...”

“I know what you mean,” she said, rolling her shoulders to relieve her aching back. “I cannot wait for the war to be over, either.”

The German chuckled in a very particular way, a cross between a snort and a giggle. He was grinning like the big idiot he was, and Ana could not imagine for the life of her what had lifted his mood so dramatically.

She looked away when she saw something moving out of the corner of her eye, but she could not spot it now.

“Do you see anything out of ordinary ahead of us?” She asked, eyes scanning the other side of the building, where their soldiers were going to head the moment they could get to the ground floor safely.

“Nothing. But I only see half of what you do.  _ At best _ .”

“Point taken. Now, sit down.”

Ana repositioned her rifle on one of the Crusader’s shoulders to look upwards through the scope, hoping it would give her the edge she needed to see what was going on. 

“Don’t even breathe,” she instructed him as she scanned the walls closely. There were no turrets there, no Omnics she could see. No animals, either. The wall was just grey and sandy rock blocks held together with mortar, though she could not see that in detail. Her scope was great, more accurate than her eyes, but its range was limited. Plus, it did not allow her to see the bigger picture. And something in her mind was screaming that the bigger picture was, actually, what she had to consider.

Ana made a thin line with her lips and checked the wall again, scanning every inch and noting every singularity. A black spot. A missing chunk. A water stain. Moss.

“Captain?” Reinhardt wheezed, and she would have smacked him in the head.

“You moron....”

A literal quake shook her rifle as he gulped in a big breath, and she sighed, using the time to scan the wall as a whole. No, nothing. She could see nothing out of ordinary. Her hands itched in anxiety, and she bit inside her mouth. Maybe she was being paranoid, but her ears were still ringing softly and she trusted nothing on the battleground.

“Ey, Reinhardt! Care to give us a hand?” Simmons, Torbjörn’s second in command waved, and the German cleared his throat.

“Permission to relinquish the tripod position, sir?” He asked in a very serious voice, eye glinting. 

Ana snorted and gave the armour a playful slap. It did not matter if he stayed or not, she still could not find what she saw. Damn it.

“Go. Keep close to Torbjörn for communications, ok? And keep them safe.”

“Always, Captain,” he got up with a grunt and smiled at her before making his way to the Engineering team

Several minutes later, their troops made it down using the ramp the engineers had built using debris and Omnic parts. Now that they were not being shot at, Torbjörn had rerouted the power on several half-destroyed Omnics to a couple of welders and his men were burning through the maze’s walls in a straight line.

“How’s things there, Sarioglu?” Ana called her Turkish counterpart over their shared frequency. “All clear?”

“Yes. Very quiet,” Sarioglu answered, his high morale clear on his tone. “Good so far. We’re almost there.”

“I think I saw something moving on the wall over you before, but I cannot spot it now.”

“There’s nothing wrong I can--” he looked up, then suddenly lowered his head. “Oh, my, I didn’t see you there.”

“Because you weren’t looking!” Torbjörn growled, but she could not spot him near Sarioglu even trying. “Oh sorry, were those your nuts? I didn’t see them there!”

Reinhardt let go a hearty laugh Ana could hear even without comms, and she sighed.

“All good there, Torbjörn? Cannot see you.”

“I’m under a comms tower, trying to brute-force hack it. Emits in Omnic frequency,” he said. The words came garbled; he seemed to have something in his mouth. “May tell us if there is anything communicating here, or if something is communicating from the outside.”

“Good idea, maybe we can get a clue where the last God program is,” she nodded, even if his friend could not see her.

“We’re going through the last wall,” Sarioglu pitched in as the team moved forward like smudges in the distance. “Leaving a soldier to guard your engineer here, Captain Amari.”

“Thanks. Be careful.”   


The moment she said that, she caught another glimpse of movement— a line running down, getting longer and longer as if someone was painting it with the tiniest pen. Or, maybe it was going up. It was difficult to tell, but it was above one of the arched windows placed just over the destroyed second floor.

Just over their troops.

“Everyone, get away from there ASAP. The wall may collapse if--”   


Ana could not finish the sentence. Their soldiers were pushing through the rubble that had fallen over the Omnics when there was a loud crack akin to a lightning bolt.

“Move away! Move!” Sarioglu yelled on the comms, and the soldiers scattered around— just, it was not the wall what was falling down. It was the legendary white dome, Istanbul’s landmark. The UN was going to be livid about it.

Ana lost her footing when several tonnes of rock crashed on the maze, bending Omnic walls and breaking everything in their wake. She curled on herself, covering her head and ears with her arms as everything trembled.

If she survived the war, she was moving to a one-storey house by the sea in the equator. A cabana at the beach where it never snowed and the only thing falling from the sky were rain and stars. Yes. Fareeha would have to grow up a bit and Ana would have to save some money, but it was definitely a goal.

The dense dust made her choke, so she raised the neck of her combat suit to cover her mouth as pebbles rebounded here and there over and around her. Her eyes itched and her ears hurt badly; the cabana was always a nice thought. A distraction. A  _ dream _ .

The reality was way, way worse.

“Team, report,” she coughed on the comms, getting on her knees. For what she could see, half the maze was now under a pile of broken rocks, chunks of windows, and the bricks that used to be part of the ceiling.

Shit.  _ Shit _ . Ana changed the comm’s frequency and called Command.

“Jack, send the airships now. We need evac and medical attention-- not sure how much or for how many. Just be ready.”

“Copy Ana, incoming,” Jack’s voice rasped, concerned. “Be safe, please.”

She could not find in herself to answer that.  There was a magnificent hole on top of the building that comprised the dome and part of the southern roof, but the rest seemed steady, for now. The dust was clearing, and she could make some silhouettes now. 

There were some survivors, at least. She swallowed hard, and her mouth tasted of dust and ashes, sand and blood. 

It was her fault. She should have seen the fracture line. She should have thought that the explosion could have weakened the building’s structure. She should have called it a day.

“Sarioglu and team reporting,” his musical accent took over the line, and she had never been happier to hear him. “We have some soldiers with minor injuries and are forming a perimeter around the area. There’s no sign of Omnics, though.”

Ana squinted and found him making gestures to a bunch of soldiers. Most of them were going for the closer exit already, but she could see the unmistakable marks of their medics and engineers on the field.

“Good, I leave that with you,” she said, her right hand clawing at the nearby pillar. “Team, keep reporting. Evacuate the injured. And someone that knows about buildings,  _ please _ assess the structure and report ASAP if there’s a risk of more collapses.”

Ana could spot several people getting up, gathering together near a pillar and looking around, but she could not see a glint of silver in the dust nor a big, bulky silhouette. But there was a lot of rubble, so much rubble-- 

“Teams 00 and 01 reporting, sir. We are unharmed and helping others evacuate.”

“Cadet Lukic of Team 02 reporting. Sgt Lee is unaccounted for. Same for half of the team.”

That was probably three-quarters of their whole team accounted for, now, bless the little miracles.

“Simmons from Engineering, here. We’re trying to find our way to the comms tower where the Chief was. He’s unaccounted for. Lt. Wilhelm, too.”

The words plunged a knife through her chest. She closed her eyes for a moment, breathless, but the world kept on moving even if it could well have frozen over for her.

“Medical reporting, one of us is unconscious. We’re helping across the board but we need supplies and evac ASAP, sir.”

“Already called Command,” Ana almost did not find her voice and had to clear her throat. It did not help much. “Do as much as you can in the meanwhile.”

She grabbed her rifle, which was still on the ground after the collapse, and lumbered towards the ramp to the ground floor. She climbed rubble mounds in autopilot and slid them down effortlessly. As if they were not there.

Just like Sam was after Samalut. Missing. AWOL. Lost to her, even if he was right there. Lost to Fareeha, who never had a father. Lost to the world and even to himself.

Just like--

A hand on her shoulder made her gasp and reconsider her surroundings; she had made it past the center of the building and had not even noticed. Ana turned around, shaking his hand off in the process, just to face Sarioglu. Dust clung to his dark skin, to his hair. Everywhere-- something told her she was not any better.

“Captain Amari, are you ok?” He asked, eyebrows slightly furrowed.

No, she wanted to say. The icy hand squeezing her lungs was not ok. The raw ache in her chest was not ok. Her friends — _ her family— _ were far worse than not ok. She nodded, instead. It was easy than trying to talk. Than having to explain that the war was almost over  _ and this should not be happening to any of them _ . Let alone under her command.

“How’s-- How’s evacuation doing?” She managed to say, putting up her best cold mask.

“Most people, injured or not, are outside. Also, we found most of the missing members of team 02, although news is not exactly positive,” he made a face. “A handful of soldiers that offered to stay are standing guard or looking for survivors. I think you should get outside and let me--”

“No,” she snapped, burning down the sympathy in his eyes with a glare. She would  _ not _ leave without her team. “Get outside. Form a perimeter. Keep us safe. The aircraft will arrive any moment, now.”

He seemed ready to say something else, but only nodded in the end and then he left her with her thoughts. Now the dust had settled, it was easy to recognize the soldiers, engineers and medics kneeling on the ground or helping people out. 

When they lifted the second body, Ana looked down. She wanted to help, but her limbs were paralyzed. It was not because she was queasy— that was impossible, after what she had seen during her soldier life-- but because she could not bear to remember Reinhardt without his stupid smile.

The idiot. She hated him. Hated his devotion, his selflessness. How terrible he was at taking care of himself— not purposely, she had learned. He was just eager to please and help and, sometimes, just because he was so absurdly resilient than he did not notice how serious his injuries were.

She hated it, and loved his dedication at the same time. His courage, his loyalty. The way the air rumbled in his chest when he laughed, and how his beard tickled when he hugged her.

_The_ _goddamn idiot_ , she thought, biting at her lower lip. She should go there. Help. Do something, be in charge. They would never let her to rot, if roles were reversed, but—

“Found the Lieutenant!” She heard Simmons faintly in the distance, and her heart skipped a beat. “He’s alive! Shit! The Chief’s here, too! Someone help me, quick!”

She skidded down the mound, her legs moving on their own mind, her rifle jumping at her back as she ran towards the engineer, and the scenario playing in front of her made her want to laugh and cry at the same time. That-- That was exactly why she did not want to see it.

Reinhardt was pinned under what looked like a ton of rubble, face red and twisted in a grimace. More than half of his armour was not visible, but he seemed to be in all fours, holding himself precariously on his right arm and left elbow. The frontal panel of the armour was scrunched against the ground, giving off sparks every now and then. Blood scurried down his face and also dripped sluggishly from the plating at his waist, but there was too much already under him to be only his.

Ana knelt by his side, her mind racing to come up with a plan to help, and she spotted a hand between the rocks and the narrow space under the armour; Torbjörn’s.

Oh, good Lord.

They could not take him out, there was just not enough space. Reinhardt’s trembling arms were giving out inch by inch, the armour’s plate bending against the ground despite its thickness. It was a matter of time it would bend enough for his bones to snap with it. The engineers were already taking chunks of debris from his back, but it was not enough. They had to be much faster if they wanted to— But, that was it!

She fumbled in her pockets until she found a little white box, all while blessing Gabriel for giving it to her. She took one of the two little syringes inside, shook it a couple of times, and plunged it on the side of Reinhardt’s neck.

“The nanoboost would kick any moment now,” she said while cupping his cheek to force him to focus on her. “You must push back. Get on your knees, you understand? We cannot take Torbjörn out if you don’t.”

He grunted on his throat, almost hiding his face on her hand, and it honestly seemed to be the only sound he could make. She could only imagine the strain he was under, and cursed the drug for taking so long.

“You can do it,” she said, voice unwavering despite the knot on her guts. It might not be of much use, but she prepared herself to push the rubble with her gloved hands. “I’ll help.”

A moment later, Reinhardt gasped and almost fell flat to his face, as if taking that breath had shuffled the weight over him. He held in the last instance, eyes squeezed and shoulders shaking. 

The veins on his neck bulged out and, with a long, heartfelt grunt, he pushed up. The rubble moved an inch, then two. Debris skidded backward and to the sides. 

Ana dug the heel of her boots on the ground and pushed with her back, her legs-- with everything. The engineers piled by her side and joined efforts with her, but it was taking forever to move the debris.  _ Forever _ . She gritted her teeth. The nanoboost would not last enough, and his heart would not cope with another shot.

“Goodness’ sake, Reinhardt, push harder!”

The Crusader grunted among teeth and the debris mound on top of him trembled. A large chunk of concrete and rock slid down like a small tectonic plaque, dragging with it a bunch more of rubble and metal pieces. A moment later, he rose from his elbow into his two arms with one mighty push. 

Nanites or not, his strength was not for the faint of heart— he would boast about this for ages if he made it.

And he would.  _ He must _ .

“Still cannot get the Chief out, there’s more rubble on top of him,” one of the medics said after a moment. “We need to free the Lieutenant first.”

Ana could not agree more, but the tone of the Reinhardt’s grunting had moved from `this is taking a lot of effort` to `this hurts like stupid` and he was still lopsided to the left. Damn. Maybe he was—

Her train of thought was interrupted when he got on his knees with a roar that would put a lion to shame, sending debris flying all over. Ana covered her head with her arms and flinched on instinct at the noise of rocks and metal crashing together. His sudden cry of pain made her dread the outcome of the explosion, but the Crusader had actually fallen on his side over a bunch of debris and was trying to breathe, grimace, and hold himself together while doing none well.

“Well done,” Ana said, her body growing weak with relief— relief that did not last much when she looked at Torbjörn. His left arm was trapped under a big boulder, and there was  _ blood _ . Too much of it. He seemed unconscious, which meant the gash on his head that was bleeding all over his face was worse than it seemed. If he was not worse was because Reinhardt’s hammer was bent in a way that helped create an air pocket around him. 

“Oh shit, not good,” Simmons said loud enough that Ana could hear, and then broke into a run towards the Crusader. He had actually gotten up to his feet, as impossible as it seemed. “Lieutenant, don’t move!”

The rest of the medics and engineers split into teams and rushed to action after him, and Ana patched in comms to the incoming ships.

“Captain Amari speaking,” she said, watching the engineers helping Reinhardt to the ground again. "We need we need medical evac for the Chief Engineer and Lt. Wilhelm along with at least ten of our soldiers.”

“Copy, sir. We will provide for them. ETA is six minutes. We’ve received landing clearance already.”

“Roger. Thanks--”

“Louis, we need you here, now!” One of the medics called, and the man seemed torn for a moment before leaving Reinhardt and turning around. He had been exchanging words with the Crusader she could not hear, but it was obvious the medic would not be able to help unless the engineers got him out of his armour.

“What’s the problem?” Ana asked, crouching by the engineers. “Cannot get him out?”

“We’ve more pressing issues,” Simmons pointed to the front of the armour, and it was only then that Ana spotted the bubbling dark foam forming underneath the bent and sparking armour chest panel. “The battery will blow up if we don’t stop the degradation, but the plate is too bent to remove the unit. Ralph’s trying to open the frontal panel now so we can unhinge it and freeze the battery until we can dispose of it at HQ,” he scratched the back of his head with a dirty hand, “or maybe, we’ll just let it blow up far from us, whatever floats our boat.”

“Sorry,” Reinhardt managed to wince and make a sheepish face at the same time. Sweat pearled his face, smudging the dirt and grime that cling to him from the collapse. “Couldn’t help it-- but you saw it? Wasn’t it amazing?”

“Sure, just-- What about the backup battery?” Ana’s voice lost strength when she turned around to check on his back. There was an imprint of something large, long and heavy crossing diagonally the engine and several of the plates on Reinhardt’s left side. Whatever hit him had bent some plates and torn others into sharp edges that disappeared inwards.

“There’s no abnormal readings coming from it. Seems to be absolutely depleted,” Simmons waved a screwdriver. “We’ll freeze it nevertheless when we deal with this one, though.”

“ _ Freeze  _ it?”

“We throw a pack a pair of cryofreeze aerosol canisters whenever he jumps in an aircraft for days like this. Never told you that?”

“No, good to know,” she said, feeling her body draining of adrenaline and leaving her tired. So tired. “Take the panel off; we’ll freeze it  _ if  _  we can.”

“The first lock opened fine, but the second is stuck,” Ralph hammered the butt of the screwdriver he had placed on the chest plate upper lock. ”But, I’m getting it open right now.”

Ana tried not to think how close to the unstable battery he was hammering. She sat on the rubble, hearing the doctors talk about a tourniquet, and tried to find anything that would distract her mind. Eventually, she noticed how each hammer blow made the Crusader’s eyes wrinkle.

She expected his joints and muscles to be sore from the strain of holding that much weight, and his back… After looking at the armour, it sure was going to be a mess. Adrenaline was still helping, she supposed, because he was taking the whole thing fairly well. The nanoboost may still not be where they wanted it to be, but it did force the body to generate a lot of it. Yet, neither adrenaline or his endurance were infinite.

“Lieutenant, report,” she said when he downright winced, hoping to both distract him and her thoughts. “What happened to you both?”

“Couldn’t get Torbjörn out in time, had to improvise,” he made a face. Ana could see the freckles on his cheeks despite the grime, his wolfish teeth as the pain made him breathe through his mouth. Both his arms were on his lap and, even if the armour’s gauntlets did not work, he seemed to be squeezing his left arm against himself. “How’s he?”

“He’s--” she looked over her shoulder. The medics were in the way, so she could not see him, but the blood on the ground glared at her. “He’s bad. Medics are with him, now.”

Reinhardt’s face grew sombre, disappointment and failure weighing more than his dead armour, but there was no point in hiding him the truth.

“Ingrid will give birth any day, now.”

“Evac is on the way,” she said. “He has a chance. You gave him a chance, even if--” Ana trailed off, shutting her mouth close at the sudden ache in her chest. He had scared her to death. It had been so close.  _ So close _ . “Even if slim,” she said in the end, ignoring the empty pit of her stomach. “But he’s as stubborn as you are. If no more.”

Reinhardt cracked a humourless half-smile, but the engineers’ last efforts to get the front panel loose made him throw his head back and barely hold a cry on his throat. As they ran away with the panel, he dropped back into his right elbow, grimacing like Ana had not seen him do since he shattered his leg.

“ _ Ow _ , shit,” he swallowed once the engine found the ground, blood scurrying anew from the junctures at the waist. He was pale like a ghost, and Ana could not unsee the jarred edges of the bent plate pointing downward like knives.

Tapping on her wrist datapad, she called on the comms again. 

“Team, ETA for evac?”

“We’re landing, Captain, less than a minute. Is everything ready, there?”

She turned around. The doctors seemed to be discussing over Torbjörn’s prone figure, but they would be as ready as they could get, because they were not staying in the half-destroyed building a minute longer than necessary.

“Yeah. Let’s go home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't mind Ana, she won't recogize a lion even if it's gnawing at her ankle. Also, I love Torb to pieces.
> 
> Hope you liked it, it took a looooot of time, effort, and rewriting... Next chapter's first draft is written at last, but it needs a lot of rewriting. Send me good vibes ;)


	4. August 2053 (36 hours later)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The UN Board wants a detailed report of what happened at the Hagia Sophia, and both Ana and Reinhardt try their best to keep them happy. Just, shit happens, as usual.

Reinhardt had been soaked in nanites. Poked, prodded, stitched, stretched and, in general, put back together by expert hands. The experience had been more similar to a nightmare than he would like to admit, but he was free to go, at last.

Well,  _ free _ was a bit of an exaggeration. He was free to rest in his room or in whatever other place he saw fit, but he must return back to Med Bay every number of hours for check ups and more meds. The doctors were not exactly happy to let him go, but Gabriel needed him.

In fact, what the Commander said among lines was that the Board was being obnoxious about the state of the Hagia Sophia and that the only way of shutting them up was to provide them with a report of every single action Ana, Torbjörn, and Reinhardt himself made during operation White Dome.

Which was bad, because writing reports was the absolute worst thing  _ ever _ ... only second to being confined in Med Bay, restrained, and/or drugged up to his eyeballs.

Reinhardt let Faith, one of their nurses, manhandle him into a loose-fitting Overwatch hoodie. He could not move enough to put on a t-shirt underneath, but the hoodie’s fabric was soft against the gauze and bandages covering his back.

“Is everything all right, Lieutenant?” She asked once he was dressed and barefoot by the bed. “How’s pain?” 

“Not bad…” He gave her a tiny smile, but the sight of his military-grade boots erased it from his face straightaway. Yes, pain was manageable-- as long as he did not bend or take a deep breath. Or move, in general.

“Ah, don’t worry about those. I’ve got something better,” she chuckled, and rummaged inside the metallic locker in the room. Reinhardt could have kissed her when he saw his trusty fluffy slippers.

The nurse left them by his feet, then poked at his wrist datapad while he put them on.

“So, your datapad is programmed to alert you in three and a half hours, which is when your next check-up is due,” she said, leaving it at the table and grabbing a sling she had prepared for him. “Come on, don’t glare. You really need it.”

“That doesn’t mean I hate it less,” he mumbled, and let her manhandle him into it. Being crippled sucked; breaking his shoulder blade was possible the most annoying injury he had ever suffered and he hated,  _ hated _ , feeling useless.

Yet, he could not complain. The rubble could have broken his spine or cracked his head like a watermelon-- occupational hazards, at the end of the day, but... it could also have killed Torbjörn.

“How’s the Chief Engineer?” He asked, realizing he had not been lucid enough to inquiry about him until now.

“He’s-- stable, for now,” she pursed her mouth. Then, she looked at him as trying to read through him. “But his injuries are serious. Even with all of our nanotechnology, he might not make it.”

Oh,  _ fuck. _ Of course. The doctors were flocking around him. Ana would not stop casting side glances. Shit. 

“I’m sorry,” Faith reached for his arm. “But you gave him a chance. We’ll make the most of it.”

“Can I see him?”

Reinhardt wanted to grab him from his shoulders and shake him until he woke up. Dying was not an option, not when the little girl was about to be born. Not with two other kids, and Ingrid. No. It was  _ not _ an option. _ Shit _ , if the baby girl did not manage to meet her father, he would have to provide for her somehow. It was only right. Actually, he would provide for them all, since it--

“You know, it’s better if you don’t,” she added quickly, interrupting his train of thought. “You need to focus on yourself. The drugs you’re in are  _ experimental  _ for a reason.”

As if that mattered, now.

“Lieutenant, I’m serious. With your records, I’m half expecting--” 

“Ah, don’t worry,” he moved the strap that bound the sling over his chest, and winced when the motion pulled at the strap around his back; it crossed a lot of bruises and was uncomfortably close to the stitches. “Need something more than a bunch of pills to take me down. I’ll be fine.”

“You always say that and you always end worse than a rug,” she put her hands on her hips. “Come straight away if you feel bad, all right? If you take care of yourself, I’ll get you to the Chief Engineer when you come for your check-up.”

Reinhardt’s eyebrows twitched as he considered finding Torbjörn on his own; the last time he tried sneaking around in Med Bay he got his arse slept by an army of doctors and nurses chasing him down the corridors. 

He rubbed his bound elbow, pursing his mouth; this time he doubted he would even cross the door before Faith used all her bad arts on him.

Bummer.

“I’ll see you in a while,” he rolled his eyes.

  
  
  


Using the wall as a crutch, Reinhardt wobbled through the corridors and got outside Med Bay. Walking hurt like stupid, but the bandages around his torso kept the damaged muscles from straining and the fracture reasonably stable. They also made him feel like a wooden doll, absolutely stiff. 

On the bright side, moving kept him from thinking about Torbjörn.

“Computer, where’s Captain Amari?” He asked to nobody in particular when he reached the elevator. The speakers on the wall answered in a metallic voice:

“In her office, Lieutenant.”

Good. He would not have to walk much more to get to her, then.

Gabriel had been a bit cryptic during his visit. He had not only told him that they had to appease the UN Board somehow; he also said Ana was still shaken about the mission. When Reinhardt pressed for details, the Commander just shrugged.

“It’s just a warning,” he had said, leaving him in the dark.  _ As usual _ .

“Send the Board to hell then,” Reinhardt had frowned. “Let her catch a break.”

“I wish I could,” he had shrugged. “We will also have a meeting later today. Teleconference. But they want the report before we meet, if possible.”

The memory made Reinhardt snort. Ridiculous. The Board had been ridiculous since the very day they started winning the war.

“Reinhardt,” someone called, and he turned to see his good friend and dealer Mark Knapps, waiting for him just as he had promised. “Sunglasses? Shit, what are you now, a fashion model?”

He rolled his head in a way it would have made Gabriel turn green with envy and, for a moment, he missed his long golden mane; the effect was just not the same with the short hair. Nor with an upset stomach.

Bright lights made his vision swim even wearing sunglasses as he was, courtesy of the new painkillers-- but, at least, they did not make him high or feel like the worst shit in the universe, which was a mercy.

If they also kept the bloody pain at bay, they would be absolutely brilliant. 

_ Cannot have it all, can we, now? _

“It’s time someone recognized my talent,” he half-smiled nevertheless, but the words sounded tired and slow even to his ears. “How have you been? Beers are more than overdue, my friend.”

They bumped fists, and the telecommunications engineer leaned on the wall by his side. 

“True, you’re always deployed in the back of beyond,” the other man chuckled. “I’m good, though. Work and more work. Nothing new under the sun, just like for you,” he waved at his sling. “Anyway, being the busy guy you are, sure we better get this done and catch up later? I’ve a good deal in my haaaaaands...”

Mark opened up a bag he was carrying with him; there was a package of medium-sized cookies and, at least, ten ounces of chocolate. In any other circumstances, Reinhardt would start salivating right there, but the bloody motion sickness really took his appetite away. It did not matter, though, since the treats were not for him; he had called Mark just after talking to Gabriel.

“Can I afford it, though?”

“Oh, please,” he waved a hand. “Special price, just for you. Two-hundred and fifty.”

_ Holy shit _ .

“Fine…” Reinhardt sighed, begrudgingly. At least, Mark always had quality stuff, and it paid. “You know my account.”

“That, I do,” the other man clapped his good arm and handled him the bag. “Always a pleasure doing business with you. Let’s catch up, ok? When you’re feeling better.”

“Sure, my friend. Thanks for this,” he raised the bag a bit, “and for lightening my wallet.”

“Anytime,” he laughed, the bastard, and Reinhardt lumbered his way towards the end of the corridor, where Ana’s office was.

He banged on the door and waited. It was not exactly his style to let doors stop him, but Ana had threatened with hanging him from his thumbs if he ever stormed into her office again, and his back hurt bad enough already. Only when he heard a faint ‘ _ come in’  _ he opened up.

Ana was bent over a datapad while checking images in an holoscreen, hair braided and wearing civilian clothes, and Fareeha was sprawled on the floor with her white headphones on. The sight of them always managed to bring a smile out of him, even on shit times like this.

“Oh, Reinhardt!” The girl squeaked the moment he dodged the doorframe. She got up with a jump like the little monkey she was and stopped by his side just before throwing herself at him. Her large chocolate eyes were glued to the sling, yet she asked: “Why are you wearing sunglasses? There’s no sun here, dummy.”

“Because they look  _ cool _ ,” he made an effort to grin this time, although he still missed his long mane greatly. “Won’t you think so?”

“Maybe if you weren’t hurt  _ again _ . What did you do now?”

Reinhardt had to cough to cover the smile her disappointment and the frown on her face brought. He could not deal with Fareeha when she acted like Ana, because she was absolutely adorable. And hilarious.

“Ah, you should have seen it. It was  _ amazing _ .”

“What was? What did you do?”

“I deadlifted half a building!!” He lifted the kid by the midsection and squeezed her against his hip. Bad idea.  _ Bad idea. _ He dropped her immediately, and flexed his good arm instead.  _ Carefully. _ “Half a building! Can you believe it?”

“No! Of course I can’t!” Fareeha snorted, hands on hips. “Buildings are too big, even for you!”

“Pah! You can ask you mom, she was there. Right, Ana? Tell her how I--”

“How you broke your shoulder and got thirty-five stitches on your back, plus the ones over your thick skull? Yeah, I can tell  her that,” Ana snapped, burning a hole through him with her glare. 

Reinhardt half-winced at the seemingly uncaring tone. Gabriel’s words made him expect Ana to be feeling bad about the building, the soldiers, and Torbjörn, but it clearly was worse than that. Thank goodness he brought chocolate and cookies.

“You didn’t run from the doctors again, did you?” She continued after a moment of silence. “Because--”

“No, I am on parole, for now,” he raised his hand asking for peace. “Gabriel said--”

Ana groaned even before he could even finish the sentence and leaned her forehead on her hands.

“-- that we need to write a report to make the Board happy before the meeting.”

“Yes, but I should be writing, and you should be resting,” she sighed. “The report is half finished, anyway.”

“Great. We’ll have more time for this, then.”

Reinhardt walked towards Ana’s desk and deposited the sweet loot just in front of her datapad. Then, he waited, chest puffed and hand on hip.

“Ahh you’re the best!!” Fareeha squeed, perching on a chair and squeezing his good arm before practically stretching over the desk to grab a cookie.

“Yeah, this must have cost you a fortune. You pamper us too much.” 

For a moment, Reinhardt could only stare at Ana like a fish out of water.

“That’s-- nonsense,” he managed to say, smiling to hide that her words had been a sucker punch to his gut. Shit, it had been years since the last time she had been this hostile to him. “I don’t give you anything I won’t give Torbjörn and his family.”

And it was true. If Ana would ever -- _ no, don’t even consider that!! _ \-- he would never leave Fareeha to the social services. Nor would the super-soldiers, most probably, but that was not the point.

There was a thick silence after his words were Ana was eyeing the chocolate with an indescribable look on her face. Her body language, though, was closed. Tense. Ready to jump and run away from her desk at a moment’s notice.

Maybe it was nothing personal? They were in good terms the last he remembered, before the medics practically knocked him unconscious once inside their ship. Maybe she was just on edge. Hurting. Sure she had not been able to see her counsellor if Gabriel had kidnapped her to write a bloody report. 

Maybe she just needed someone to talk to.

“Is everything all right? Can I help? I’m happy to listen.” 

“No--  _ no _ , it’s ok,” Ana leaned back in her chair --and thus, further away from Reinhardt. Then, she grabbed a slab of chocolate and showed it to him. “You win, though you shouldn’t have brought anything. Now, let’s get to work, please.”

Her reticence to let him into her comfort zone was disheartening but, at least, she was not sending him out.  _ Yet _ .

“Sure, let’s do something productive...” 

Reinhardt pulled at one of the chairs by her desk and groaned at the stabbing pain that rippled through his back.

“You may be more comfortable on the sofa,” Ana said in a low voice, and he grumbled under his breath. Shit, it was a fucking chair, not at an elephant. If batting his eyelashes the wrong way was going to hurt like this, he surely was not looking forward to the rest of the afternoon. 

“What’s the deal with the glasses, though?” 

The question came as Reinhardt lowered himself on the cushions. It took him a while to answer, gritting his teeth as he was while awkwardly trying not to move an inch more than necessary. 

“Bright light makes me see funny,” he said once settled down. “Painkillers.”

“Oh,” Ana looked at him out of the corner of her eye, tapping at the desk with her short nails. “They don’t seem to be affecting you much. Or, in any way, if your wincing is of any indication.”

“They’re an experimental branch we’re creating with the doctors at the Dove. It’s better for some things. Not so much for others.”

There was a moment of silence --time Reinhardt used to squirm on the sofa to find a way he could lean on the cushions without actually leaning on them-- before Ana spoke again.  

“Fareeha, go get your homework done. Hey, I’m talking to you, young lady.”

The girl made a frowny face and put down her earphones. Then, she picked up the datapad, walked towards Reinhard and sit on the armrest of the sofa, all very silent and solemn. 

“I have to make up a story for school,” Fareeha said at last, putting the datapad on his lap and looking at him with big chocolate eyes. “But mom sucks at stories, and I need help.”

Oh.

That was not what Reinhardt was expecting from his trip to Ana’s office, but a small smile pulled at his lips nevertheless. It meant the world to him that she liked his stories, it really did.

At the beginning, telling her what he remembered of his unit and the trouble they got into was awkward. Not because of her, little darling she was, but because he failed to put in words a lot of his thoughts. It was hard, and it only got harder when she asked for pictures... but, it got better, with time. And it soon reached a point where he ran out of things to tell.

That was a disaster of immeasurable proportions; he wanted to keep coming back to see her and Ana! Fortunately, Fareeha did not mind hearing the same stories several times, nor she cared if he invented them. That jolted his memory sometimes, so the counsellor encouraged him to keep doing it. 

Besides, it was not like he was exaggerating; Balderich could have arm-wrestled a bear, had he wanted to.

“So, what do you want your story to be about?”

“A girl that’s awesome!” Fareeha pumped her fists. “She’s clever, and fast, and strong. And she’s a soldier--”

“Nope, she’s not,” Ana pitched in, and the girl groaned and glared at her mother.

Uh, oh. It looked like someone had an argument about the  _ forbidden subject _ . That sure had not helped Ana’s mood. 

“Ah, but she doesn’t need to be a soldier to be awesome,” Reinhardt said in the end, tapping his fingers on his leg. Disappointment was still written all over her face, so he continued, forcing some cheerfulness onto his voice. “It’s true! If you remember the story of--”

“I don’t care!” She snorted. “The girl wants to be a soldier!”

“Fareeha…” Ana called her, a warning in her tone.

“It’s unfair! Why can't she be what she wants?” 

“Because you don’t know what you are talking about. End of the discussion,” Ana slammed a hand on her desk, her eyes made of the hardest ember. Shit. She looked even angrier than that time Gabriel went around the base saying she had been sending him nudes.

There was a moment of tense, awkward silence. Fareeha’s mouth quivered, her eyes filling with tears, and then she started wailing. Fareeha’s cries did not soften Ana, though. If only, they just hardened her stance further. She was like a panther ready to jump for the kill, all sharp edges, all tension.

At least one thing was clear, now; Ana did not hate him in particular. She hated the entire world.

“Ah, no need to get upset. Come here—” Reinhardt picked up the kid, if only to drop her immediately on his lap with a grimace.  _ Stupid, useless painkillers _ . 

She kept on crying, squeezing her face against his hoodie. Oh, boy. Maybe getting out of Med Bay had not been such a good idea, after all. He was way too tired for this.  _ Any  _ of this.

“What about I tell you about my  _ oma? _ ” He sighed, rubbing her back. “She was not a soldier, but she was an awesome lady. I think you may like her.”

“Your what?” The girl hiccupped and shifted, her small fingers clawing the hoodie. Her face was covered in tears and snot, and he wiped it clean with his hand the best he could.

“My grandma. She worked at a forge,  _ ja _ , making tools and ah,  _ stuff _ . She baked the best cakes you could dream of, covered in  _ layers _ of chocolate. She gave the best hugs, too.”

Reinhardt remembered his  _ oma _ fondly-- she was the best thing about his summers in Bavaria, before boarding school-- but that alone was not going to convince the little pumpkin.

Time to pull out the big guns.

“It’s been ages since I told this to anyone, but I know you’ll keep my secret,” he poked her belly with a finger, making her squirm. “But no more crying,  _ ja _ ?”

Fareeha pouted and rubbed her face with both hands, sending a sad, upset look at her mother. Then, she nodded at him, still sniffling. 

“Good. When I was around your age, I fell into a well. I broke my leg--”

“Already?” Ana interrupted him, not even looking up from her datapad. “You sure attract trouble.”

“It was an  _ accident _ ,” he rolled his eyes. “But I won’t expect your highness to know what that is.”

His comeback made her look at him, if just for a moment. Good. Upset or not, the sooner Ana realized she was being an absolute pain in the arse, the better.

“Anyway,” he cleared his throat, “soon I realized the water was starting to rise. In few minutes, it reached my waist. It was cold! And it was dark inside the well, and nobody could hear me cry out… I was  _ scared _ .”

That did it. Fareeha’s eyes grew big, and she dug her small fingers on his forearm. Ah, she was precious.

“When the water was up to here,” he touched one of her shoulders, “I heard  _ Oma’ _ s voice. She had found me! She slid down the well with her hands and trainers only,  _ ja! _ Down as much distance as this whole office!. Then, she put me in her shoulders, and climb--”

“She carried  _ you _ ? That’s impossible!”

“But she did! She put me over her shoulders and climbed up with me. She saved my life, Fareeha.”

“No way,” she murmured, grabbing his good arm and struggling to lift it up. “It just… She must have been way stronger than you!”

“She was way, way stronger,” he nodded solemnly.

“Stronger than Balderich?”

“Ah, she would have given him a run for his money, I can assure you that,” he chuckled tiredly. “She was also a very kind woman, you know. Always smiling. She managed to have food for everyone that came home--”

“Just like someone I know…” Ana said, taking a bite of a cookie. She was the worst, pretending not to care nor listen, then chirping at every possible opening. 

He snorted softly, the ache in his chest easing somewhat.

“What did she look like?” Fareeha curled on her chair. “Was she big like you?”

“Ah, not as much, no. But, let me see, her hair was almost grey…  And she wore ornaments in it, a bit like you do,” Reinhardt said, poking her little nose. “To be fair, it’s been a long time, and I don’t remember her looks very well.”

The child tapped her little fingers on his arm, seemingly lost in thought, and Reinhardt used the time to wriggle on the cushions, trying to get more comfortable-- just, there was no way he could really lean and  _ not lean _ at the same time, and he ached no matter what he did.

“But I still don’t know what to do about my story,” Fareeha pouted after a moment, thankfully distracting him again. 

“What if you made it about a clever and strong young lady that helps people?” He rubbed the elbow of his bad arm absentmindedly. “For example, she might go through dark, narrow tunnels no-one else would venture through to help someone in need.”

“Ohhh there may be lava under the tunnels!” She pumped her fists. “She may need to jump super high and be super fast. Or maybe she can  _ FLY _ !”

“ _ Ja!  _ And, in her way, she might find--” 

“A puppy in trouble! Yes! A baby crocodile!” Fareeha clapped, excited about the prospect. However, she grew a bit wary a moment later. “But, can she keep it?”

Reinhardt blinked, wondering why in the world would she would want a crocodile, of all pets.

“Will she take good care of it, though? They grow a lot. Need a lot of food.”

“She has a big friend that eats a lot,” she looked at him with a frown, but then grinned. “He will teach her how to take care of it.”

Ana snorted before Reinhardt had time to register that Fareeha was talking about him. 

“Now that it’s a great story, Fareeha,” Ana said, leaning her chin on her hands while he tickled the kid in retaliation. “Why don’t you make a list with all these? Reinhardt and I need to do some work, now, but we will check it with you later.”

Fareeha made a little pouty face, but did not protest. Reinhardt patted her legs; she was such a well-behaved little darling that he always felt she was missing out on being a kid.

But that was a no-no argument with Ana.

“So, what would you have me do, then?” He asked once the girl left his lap for her place on the floor.

“Nothing, really. But, since you’ll protest until you have it your way,” she raised an eyebrow, “I’ve given you access to the file I’ve been writing. Grab one of the larger datapads, you’re going to need it.”

Reinhardt checked the report’s table of contents and wheezed. It was  _ infinite _ . He jumped back and forth between sections, impressed by the amount of work she had done in such a short period of time, even if he could not read the details. The sentences were blurred, and a large red watermark saying  _ classified _ covered half of each page.

“I’d like you to read the table of contents and tell me if there’s anything missing. Then, write whatever you’d like me to include as a comment, and I’ll merge everything when you’re done.”

Well, at least he would not have to read pages and pages. One thing took his attention, though; the summary was not classified for his clearance level:

_ Strike team under the command of myself, Captain Ana Amari, was deployed to Istanbul, Turkey, to deal with a remaining pocket of Omnic resistance. _ _~~entrenched with heavy artillery inside the Hagia Sophia~~. _

_ While the team was  _ _ ~~fucked up, we fought our way through the entrenched forces holding way superior firepower~~ _ _ able to overcome and neutralize all hostile forces  _ _ ~~at great personal cost~~ , _ _ with less than 20% of casualties, the  _ **_Omnics_ ** _ caused serious damage to the structure of the Hagia Sophia _ _ ~~almost causing a massacre~~ _ _. Chief Engineer Lindholm’s wits saved both the building and the team from a catastrophic explosion. I recommend a commendation for his actions. _ _ ~~and service~~. _

_ In an attempt to secure the building and recover additional intel  _ _ ~~to end the war ASAP~~ _ _ for the greater good of Overwatch and our mission, the Chief Engineer  _ _ ~~endangered his life~~ _ _ suffered serious injuries. Had it not been for Lt. Wilhelm’s  _ _ ~~selflessness~~ _ _ timely intervention, it is likely that the Chief Engineer would have been killed.  _ _~~At the time of this report, his life is stil~~ _ _ Due to conspicuous bravery on the part of Lt. Wilhelm, I am suggesting a commendation for his actions, too. _

Reinhardt looked at Ana out of the corner of his eye, but she was again concentrated on writing, and did not see the small smile on his lips fighting to become a full-fledged grin.

Or that he thought.

“Don’t be so proud of yourself,” she snorted. Her voice carried a hint of malice and the cadence of tiredness, but not the anger it had before. “The sofa can only take so much of your flexing.”

“But you think I’m brave!” He did indeed flex as much the bandages left him, which fortunately was not much. “Enough to ask for a commendation for me!” he wiped an imaginary tear from his eye. “I’m touched, really.”

She tapped her fingernails on the desk and leaned her head on her other hand to look at him for a brief moment. Then, she went back to the datapad.

“Please,” she said after a moment, eyebrows raising so slightly. “I’ve asked for many commendations for you in the past.”

“Have you, now?”

“Yes. To the  _ biggest idiot  _ on the team. But somehow the Board never listens to me.”

He snorted and rolled his eyes, but ended up grinning at her. Now, that was more the Ana he knew and loved. Not that he did not love the grumpy, feral one, but he rather have her playfully roast him than shred him to pieces. She was munching some chocolate, the evilness, and he was glad, really glad to be of service.

Bloody hell. She had really worried him, for a while. 

“Don’t you want a cookie?” 

“I’m not really hungry, thanks.” His words made her raise her gaze from the datapad instantly, and her mind-reading gaze pierced him. “It’s fine. Painkillers.” 

“But you need to eat, for the nanites.”

“I know. I’ll try in a while. Do you want me to start somewhere specifically?” Reinhardt changed topics, if only because he was positive he was not going to eat later either. She did not need to know that, though.

“It’ll help if you can write anything you remember about the cannon. Anything you did, whatever you remember Torbjörn doing. Anything that can help explain why the building collapsed.”

Her voice wavered slightly at the end of the sentence, but her face was as unreadable as usual. Actually, that was not true. 

“You don’t… It was not your fault, Ana. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” she let go a soundless sigh. “Get to work, please.”

  
  


———

 

Three hours and a failed lunch later, the alarm on Reinhardt’s wrist datapad went off. 

He had been going through every single item in the table of contents, trying to remember what happened, what he was doing, and why he was doing it-- but, to his shame, he had not been able to write a lot.

The drugs may not impair his thinking much, but tiredness, pain, and sheer  _ boredom _ did. Reports were the absolute worst on a good day with his earbuds on. Earbuds he had forgotten to bring, of course. And typing-- shit. Typing with one hand was just the worst. It was freaking 2053, they sure could invent something some sort of thought recognition for people working in teams, or something.

“It’s Med Bay’s reminder for the check-up,” he sighed, stopping the alarm. 

“You know what to do, then.”

_ Ja _ , but he was not looking forward to getting back to Med Bay. Or to move, for that matter. If the way he had been aching for the past hour was of any clue, getting there was going to be hell.

Slowly, he pushed himself up from the sofa. He did not even remember holding his breath or grinding his teeth, because his nerves catching fire was the only thing in his mind.  _ Stiff _ did not hold enough meaning for how he felt. He was a goddamn carving on stone. One that would not bend without breaking.

“You ok there?”

“Just need a moment,” he wheezed, straightening the last inches.

Just, that moment was more like an eternity.

He stumbled towards the doorway, where he leaned to catch his breath. Pain was not that bad as long as he stood still, but  _ shit _ . His knees were like old, mushy,  _ throbbing  _ jelly, and the rest of him was not feeling much better.

The new painkillers were not as strong, that was a given, but he was feeling like shit warmed up.

“Go back to your room when you’re done and rest. Hear me? Forget about the report and the meeting.”

“It’s fine. I’ll manage,” he forced himself to smile to reassure her, but she was already on her feet and walking towards him. “Really. Besides, there’s more I want to add to the report, and--”

“No. You are in no shape to be out of bed,” she frowned, resting a hand on the small of his back, where it should not ache but did nonetheless.

“But--”

The hand on his back formed a claw such that he could feel her nails through the fleece. Reinhardt saw her lower her head, her lovely dark hair obscuring her face. She looked so small all of sudden, so fragile, that he would have squeezed her against his side if her mood was not so volatile.

“Ana?”

“You promised to take care of yourself.”

She dropped the words like a bomb and looked back at him while crossing her arms tightly. Her proverbial armour was back as quickly as she had lost it, and she was arching the Eyebrow of Disapproval.

Of course, she was right. Not to say bed sure sounded like a place where he could collapse right now. _Slowly_. But they needed to deal with the mission fallout as a team and it nagged him to no end to be unable to fulfil his duties.

Surely he could write from bed. With some music, to keep things interesting?  _ Ja _ , that may work. Actually, he could use dictation if he was going to be alone-- but the way Ana was glaring told him it was not an idea she wanted to hear about. 

“Would you call if you need me?”

She rolled her eyes and pushed him out without strength.

“Go already before I actually walk you there like the  _ poor _ cripple you are…”

 

——-

 

Limping all the way back to the basement had been a feat of endurance. The corridors felt infinite as he wobbled, holding himself on the wall, and he would have stopped halfway through if getting to move again had not hurt way worse.

He could use a big sofa. And a bunch of cushions. A blanket. And someone that cared minimally about him to curl with. Extra points if they would pet his hair.

Maybe he should make some calls.

He was lumbering out of the elevator when he crashed into someone.  Any other time he would have not even noticed it until the inevitable growls and cries of pain, but today-- today, he sucked a breath among teeth when his muscles tensed to keep his balance.

“Aw, shit, sorry. Are you--? Oh, hey, man,” Simmons greeted from behind several rolls of millimetric paper that almost hid his face completely. “I was actually looking for you. I thought it would be easier for me to come see you, than for you to come to the Bay.”

“You’re not wrong,” Reinhardt let go his breath. The engineer was not exactly who he had in mind, no. And it was not that he hated the guy, not at all, but he was  _ so verbose _ . “But it’s not a good time now.”

“Sure, sure. But I really need your input on something, won’t take us long.”

Reinhardt glared at him, but the sunglasses probably hide it because Simmons was already trodding along. Goddamnit. Torbjörn was also like a dog with a bone when he hyper-focused on getting something fixed. Maybe it was an engineer thing, that. Or maybe being obnoxiously mental was a requisite for being an engineer.

However, Simmons was there to talk about his armour, which was practically the second thing he cared about the most in the world.

Damn it. 

“Let’s stop at this room then,” he said, limping badly the few feet up separating them from  the doorway of a small meeting room.

Simmons left the rolls of paper he had been carrying over the only table in the room, then turned around with a digi-pen his hand. 

“I dig the sunglasses, you know,” he said. “They suit you. We could probably tint the visor on your helmet--that’d be cool! Oh, but then it wouldn’t glow, pah.”

“Get to the point,” Reinhardt grunted while walking towards one of the walls, where he leaned. “You’ve five minutes.”

“Ok, good! We need to replace many circuits across the armour, which would take us around a week’s work, tests and all, provided we have all the components in stock,” Simmons talked quickly, almost without breathing, and tapped the pen on the table. “We can fix in parallel the plating that’s not coming from J08’s factories directly, but the new power supplies would take around three weeks minimum to be shipped. Three weeks.”

“Holy shit, that’s a long time,” Reinhardt frowned. “The cannon made a mess--”

“Wait, wait, wait!” Simmons pointed at Reinhardt’s fluffy slippers with his mouth wide open. “What the fuck are those??”

Wait. That rung a bell— oh.

“Shit,” he said, holding his bad arm against himself while chuckling. “I thought I was the only one who remembered that...”

“My good man, I’m the keeper of the useless and otherwise lost Internet knowledge,” the engineer put his hands on his hips and grinned like a maniac. “I’ve backup of things you would not believe! Just look.”

He tapped at his wrist datapad, and connected it to the screen on the wall. The very same designs he had in paper showed up, ready to receive any changes he made via the digi-pen, but he quickly discarded that to show him a directory of vines. 

Oh, boy. This was something Reinhardt would have never imagined about Torbjörn’s second-in-command despite having talked to the guy many times over the years. 

The videos were as funny and old as Reinhardt remembered them to be. Some were just US-based, but many crossed the world while the Internet was still active. It was amazing, like looking through a window to a forgotten past.

“Ah, I’ve a ton more,” Simmons said after a bunch of reproductions. “Wanna watch more any other time, or have I bored you forever already?”

“Some other time. With beer.” 

“That’s a promise. But, in all honesty, what the hell? Fluffy slippers? You? Hero takes a fall, man.” 

“Are you suggesting there’s something wrong with them?” Reinhardt snorted, the threat on his tone diluting as he changed the weight from one leg to the other.  _ Oww _ , he truly needed to get going to Med Bay, or he would collapse in a corner even before getting there.

“No, not at all, of course,” Simmons flipped the pen on his fingers, then tapped the desk with the pen’s butt. “But let’s go back to business, I’ve a shit-ton things to do. I’m thinking about improving the armour’s schematics as a whole, since we’ll have a delay in any case. Protecting the circuits better from external factors such as extreme heat and plasma pulses comes to mind.”

“That would be helpful, ja.”

“Also, what about we try to protect you better, too?” He flipped the pen again. “See, there’s nothing between the plating and you here and here. You could easily get burned if exposed to enough heat.”

“I can’t see shit from here,” he growled under his breath, then wobbled towards the table. “There’s only plating there because— ah, of the armour’s tight-fit. If you add padding just like there’s at the front panel, you’ll need to make the piece twice as bulky to keep the air flow.”

“Well, maybe, if we use BioCool. But, what if we use Aerogel, for example? It’s lightweight, and a thin layer goes a long way. If we placed it between the components, like, ah, here...”

Simmons fumbled with the papers until he found the one that exposed the circuits of the armour. With the pen, he drew several lines over several components, and across an area that was mostly plating.

“It’s also extremely fragile. We tried to use it--”

“It’s been ages since that, man. Let me research on it, that’s all I ask of you.”

Reinhardt groaned inwardly. It would not work. He knew that for a fact. Torbjörn had also tried to give him more protection with no avail-- but Simmons was looking at him with the same huge eyes Fareeha used when she wanted a ride on his shoulders. Well, they had time. Ja, he could do-- it was fine to do some drawings. Torbjörn’s shadow was long despite his short stature, so if that made Simmons-- If that--  _ Holy fucking shit _ . He squeezed the backrest, trying hard not to grimace when pain went up a notch on its own accord.

“You ok there?”

“ _ Ja, _ ah— do a proof of concept,” he lowered his head for a moment, then took a breath as deep as the bandages and his batted muscles allowed. Fuck. The fracture throbbed sharply when he moved-- which was sort of expected, but the rest of his back ached in a way he had never experienced before. Inside out, if that made any sense. Not to talk about his knees and hips. Or even his good shoulder.

Taking into account he was used to bouncing off the walls, wrestling, and killing himself at the gym, that was not exactly a good omen.

“It may be best if I get going,” the engineer tapped with the pen on the desk. “You’ve places to be, right?”

Reinhardt did not answer that, dreading walking again.

  
  


What was really bad, though, was the nurses making him to sit down on a large stool in one of the examination rooms --stool he would need to get up from, at some point-- only to remove most of the bandages that kept him straight.

It was not the first time they did this to him, his mind vaguely supplied while a doctor inspected and poked at the stitches, but he had been mostly comatose and lying flat on his stomach back then; keeping himself from bending and moving without help was  _ fantastic  _ when half his body was screaming at him.

“Oh, Angela. Come see. The Lieutenant is always an interesting case,” the doctor that was looking after him said, and Reinhardt growled inwardly. He hated being learning material, and it always happened. 

It was the raw display of muscles and testosterone, for sure. Or maybe his hair. Or his size. Sometimes, even the scar crossing his eye was subject of much poking and investigation. He hated it during routinely check-ups, and he fucking wanted to kill everyone involved when everything hurt.

“Oh dear, what happened to him?” The newcomer was a young woman, by the sound of her voice, but that did not save her from his inner contempt.

The doctor provided a long-winded explanation that could be resumed in `rubble crashing on top of him`, and then continued with how he was checking the work of the nanites.

“I’ll check how your arm is doing,” he said, and a device lowered from the ceiling with an electric humming. Its cold surface pressed against Reinhardt’s neck first, then moved towards  his bad shoulder with exquisitely slow motions. “Good. The shoulder blade is already holding up. Good progress, Lieutenant.”

_ Ja _ , it was fantastic. Just awesome. Reinhardt was a second from clapping and jumping in awe-- or would be, if he could breathe.  _ Bloody hell _ , he was seeing stars under his squeezed eyes.

“Hey, he… Pain seems bad.” The woman’s German accent was thick-- if he had to guess, she was Swiss, from the North. She was also quite young, probably in training, and no, Reinhardt was not over-analyzing it; he just needed something to distract his mind from the thumping of blood on his ears before it drowned him. “Doctor?”

Reinhardt ran a hand over his face when the doctor withdrew the device. His left side was on fire from the neck down to the pelvis, while the right side throbbed in sympathy.

The doctor hummed and put another gadget against his neck, this time a handheld one. It beeped twice before reading his vitals, and then he took it away with a little snort.

“Have photophobia and the swimming vision subsided?”

“No,” Reinhardt tried to draw breath without much luck. It sucked. It all sucked, and all he wanted was to lay somewhere and curl into an undignified ball of misery. 

No, no curling. Just thinking about moving made his back hurt worse.

“Have you eaten anything today?” The doctor asked, then made another humming noise.

“Skipped lunch,” he looked to the side. Ana almost had his skin when he only had two bites of stew, but he could not help himself. “Queasy.”

“Do you have any other pain? Any unusual feeling? Tingling, numbness?”

The doctor’s warm hands felt Reinhardt’s midsection, his fingers specifically prodding below the ribs of his right side. He found himself swallowing at the surge of pain radiating from his back.

“Nothing specific, no.”

“It is interesting...” The doctor trailed off, and there was a moment of silence only broken by someone aggressively tapping a screen. “The effect of the drugs doesn’t seem to have waned just yet, but you are in more pain than I expected.”

“Have you ruled out rhabdo?” The young woman asked.

“Nanites should be taking care of that but, since working with the Lieutenant is a lottery, I’ve asked for blood tests,” the doctor sighed, and his fingertips touched the base of Reinhardt’s neck-- just, no. It was not him. These fingers were small and careful like little butterfly legs. 

“A lottery?”

“Yeah, he has like three pages full of drug contraindications in his medical history.”

_ Ja _ , hilarious. 

“Oh, wait.  _ Oh, dear _ ,” the girl gasped, then positioned herself in front of Reinhardt. Her blonde hair had been hastily tied in an up-do, and her clothes were far too big for her small frame. She was pretty, even more blushing like a strawberry as she was. “I, ah, didn’t recognize you, Herr Wilhelm.”

Oh, a fan. A lovely, German-speaker,  _ teenager _ fan. That still did not absolve her from using him as learning material. 

The doctor walked in front of his line of vision as well and took his sunglasses off for a moment to check his eyes. The flash light sent daggers through Reinhardt’s skull, and he had to squeeze the edge of the bench he was sitting on not to punch the other man to oblivion and beyond.

“So, the stitches don’t seem to be infected, the bruising seem-- well, it's too early to tell. But it looks like nanites are keeping it under control,” the doctor enumerated. “All in all, it looks like you are healing well, but we need to wait for the blood tests to come back before we know more. Until then, I’m afraid you should stay here. I’m concerned your liver may be having trouble with the drugs.”

As if Reinhardt could run away.

“Can you bind me back already, please?” He squeezed the nape of his neck. Had anyone told him he would miss both the bandages and the sling this much, he would have guffawed in their faces.

“Sure. Angela, can you manage? I’ll go see if we can get the blood results faster.”

The girl and him exchanged some more words, but Reinhardt was too busy trying to keep himself straight to pay much attention-- at least, until a small hand touched his shoulder.

“I’m going to get you sorted out, ok? The nanite soup is a bit cold, though…” The girl said, popping briefly in his field of vision. “It may help the pain.”

“Aren’t you a bit young for this?”

“Probably,” she shrugged, and disappeared at his back. A moment later, she was holding a roll of thick elastic bandages against his pecs. “Grab this end, and keep it here.”

She was being careful, yet the bandages pressing against the stitches and the bruising on his left side was unpleasant at best-- but, soon pain started to recede as more and more of his muscles were bound again.

“Ah, I never believed Ingrid when she said we would meet like this,” she said after a while, stretching yet more bandages over his midsection. The soft snort she ended the sentence with almost sounded like a humourless laugh.

“What did you--?” He frowned, trailed off. “Who are you?”

“I’m Angela. Angela Ziegler,” she said, and switched to German. “A friend of Torbjörn’s family.” She might have felt his distrust, because she continued. “Ah, it’s-- uhm.... Ingrid was a friend of my parents --job related stuff, you see-- and I, ah… ended up living with them for a while until I got my internship at the Dove hospital.”

That was weird. He sure had not met her when he went to Sweden. Unless…

“Your parents, what was their job, again?”

“They were doctors. Worked in a prestigious hospital here, the Dove, specializing in nanotechnology, but had a research commission in a Swedish hospital,” she said, and it clearly was a thorny subject by the way she was looking at the roll on her hand. “They got to travel there a lot, which is how they met the Lindholms. I don’t have the details, though. Never… Never really asked, you know.”

The way she half-smiled made Reinhardt feel bad. Damn, he thought she was someone’s daughter on a school project or something, but-- shit. He remembered Torbjörn saying he was friends with some good Swiss doctors when they went to Sweden to get his knee fixed and, at some point, he may have mentioned someone was staying home with--

Wait.

“Did you say you lived with Ingrid until you got an  _ internship _ in the Dove? But you’re just a kid. You must be  _ extremely intelligent _ .”

She blushed up to the root of her hair and laughed nervously.

“Yeah, I’m kind of gifted.”

“Shit, gifted,” Reinhardt squeezed the edge of the stool as she tightened the bandages. He could not bend more than a couple of inches again, which was great, even if now he could barely breathe. “Wish we had met in better circumstances, though. And not talking about myself, really.” 

The girl made a face.

“Well, he’s well attended and alive,” she said. “And at least I can see him and tell Ingrid how he is.”

_ Ja _ , he should be calling her. He should, really, get Faith to show him where he was. Just like he should be writing a report and helping Ana. And, probably, he should also be keeping an eye on Simmons. Just in case.

A splotch on his back made him gasp and swallow his thoughts in one go.

“Sorry. It is quite cold, isn’t it?”

It was. Reinhardt squeezed his eyes at the sensation, but soon relaxed; it was refreshing to have his brain worry about a different kind of pain. The girl went on daubing the bandages on his back, and the room soon filled with the familiar antiseptic and menthol scent of the nanite soup.

“Good-- all done. Any better?”

He nodded slowly and took the sunglasses off for a moment to rub his eyes. Enduring the pain was draining the little energy he had. Worst was, he would have to move again to get either to his room or to whatever room the doctor wanted him in, and he did not want to. 

Really, anything but moving.

“The doctor should be here anytime now,” she opened the door to take a peek outside. “There, he’s coming now.”

Finally. If he took much longer, Reinhardt would not be able to even try dictating anything about the mission before— 

His wrist datapad started ringing again and no, this time it was not an alarm. It was an incoming call from the officer’s meeting room.

Fuck.

“I’ve to take this, sorry,” he sighed, and poked randomly at the small screen until it stopped ringing. “Reinhardt speaking. Insecure channel.”

“Lieutenant, would you be so kind of coming to the officers meeting?” Gabriel’s voice was thick with sarcasm and contained anger, and that was enough to make Reinhardt rub the back of his neck.

“Can we sort it over a secure channel?” 

“No. You—”

Suddenly, the doctor ran into the room and stopped just by Reinhardt with a very unamused face.

“Commander, this is Doctor Shollner,” he interrupted Gabriel mid-sentence. “I advise against the Lieutenant leaving Med Bay for now. I’ve concerns about his overall health.”

“Can we just borrow him for half an hour and return him to you?”

The doctor looked at Reinhardt intently and made a face.

“Not in good faith, no.”

“Told you he’s unwell,” the datapad caught Ana’s hiss. Her concern managed to make Reinhardt half-smile, at least.

“Are there any more problems, Commander Reyes?” Another voice, a bit more distorted, echoed on the speakers; the meeting had already started, apparently. “If the report is incomplete and we don’t get to talk to the involved agents, how do you think we’re going to get back to the Turkish Government?”

_ Oh, no. _

“I can provide the information you need, sir,” Ana quickly said. “We are just--”

“Sorry but, as the officer in Command, we need to take your reporting with a pinch of salt, if you know what I mean,” someone else said. “It’s already unfortunate enough that the officer that managed the cannon that supposedly blew up the Hagia Sophia is indisposed.”

_ For fuck’s sake. _

“I’ll go,” Reinhardt looked at the doctor. He was glaring at him, arms crossed. “Just half an hour,  _ ja _ ? I can do it.”

He would limp there like a dying dog, but he could do it. 

Probably.

“Reinhardt, don’t--” 

He tapped at his datapad before he could hear Ana’s complaint. He hated doing this to her, but he would apologize later, once they had dealt with the Board as a team.

“I strongly disapprove, Lieutenant.”

“Believe me, I’ve zero interest in going. But I have to,” he rubbed his eyes, then let his hand drop on his lap. “Can you make me a bit presentable for the UN’s Board?”

  
  
  


“Here we are,” Faith said after having walked with Reinhardt all the way to the officer’s meeting room on the upper floor. The doctor would have sent him on a wheelchair but Reinhardt had snapped in two the last one that  _ supposedly _ could hold his weight.

“All right. You call me when you’re ready to get back,” she continued. “But, if the doctor texts me about the results I’m coming to fetch you straight away. Understood?”

“Right,” Reinhardt nodded tiredly and knocked on the door, opening up a moment later. 

Gabriel and Ana were standing up in the space made by the semicircular desk in the center of the room, arms folded behind their uniformed backs. Simmons was sitting at a table behind them, looking both serious and a moment away from freaking out.

Of course, the UN Board was on via video-conference, and Reinhardt did his best not to look directly at the screen.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said when everyone turned around to look at him. He leaned his right shoulder on the wall and ignored their looks. No, he was not sitting down. And yes, he was still wearing his hoodie and slippers. And the sunglasses. And he gave no fucks about what the Board would think of him.

“Lieutenant Wilhelm, thanks for joining us,” Gabriel made a gesture towards him. “We were discussing about the great job the team did—“

“Ah, don’t start again, Commander,” one of the members of the UN board said. “This mission was a disaster of biblical proportions, and we still have no idea what we are going to tell the Turkish Government.”

“That our team liberated their country, at last? They’re welcome, though.”

“Don’t be so impertinent, Reyes,” another member of the board snapped. “Now that things are returning to normalcy, we need to be careful. The least we want is to start a war among ourselves, now.”

“Nobody’s trying to start a war, sir,” Gabriel said, and Reinhardt could swear he had  _ heard _ him roll his eyes. “Do I need to remind the board that the Omnics were powering up a small-scale omnium underneath the Hagia Sophia?”

Oh, shit. That was the first time Reinhardt heard about that, but it sure explained why they were so entrenched. Why they had that blasted cannon, too. He made a thin line with his mouth. It was a good thing they destroyed the Omnics before they could regroup. Recreate. Rebuild--  _ Re-whatever _ .

He changed the weight from one leg to another, forcing his replaced knee to hold him in the hopes of distracting himself from his back. Probably screwing with it was not the best idea, but the pain was getting sharper by the minute, not helping the nausea at all. And he really,  _ really _ rather not puke his guts out in front of the Board.

However, the movement, albeing minimal, stirred something on his right side-- something that sank its teeth inside him and would not let go.

Fuck the big screen. Fuck his back. Fuck the painkillers, and fuck it all in no specific order.

The conversation continued; Gabriel and Ana took different turns explaining what happened to the Board, but half of the conversation was going way over Reinhardt’s head as he focused on breathing. 

Not that it mattered. 

“That does not make the destruction of the building any more acceptable,” someone pointed out  _ again. _ It was the only thing they had in mind, the bloody building, and it was grating on his nerves. Fuck the Board, specially.

“Maybe, but they made the decision of blowing up the cannon,” Gabriel shrugged. “Probably trying to save their secret operation underneath while obliterating my team.”

“Your team should have stopped that cannon in the first place, Commander,” Goldsmith said, crossing his arms over his desk. “We have the best engineers in the planet working for Overwatch, you just can’t--”

Reinhardt interrupted him by slamming his open hand on the wall. He was absolutely fed up of the back and forth going nowhere, but he could just ignore it. But trying to throw dirt on his friend? No. That was not going to happen.

“If Chief Engineer Lindholm decided the blast could not be stopped, it was _because_ _it could not be stopped_ ,” he said slowly, having trouble to find the words. “How do you dare to infer that he did less than he, ah-- than he could when he isn’t even here to defend himself?”

The Board members went  _ livid _ , their faces pinched in badly-suppressed anger. Good. That was worth looking at the bloody screen. Even Gabriel and Ana had turned to face him, surprised first, then glaring a hole through him.

“Our  _ way too enthusiastic _ Lieutenant has a point,” the Commander said almost among teeth, turning around. Once his hands were at his back again, he gave Reinhardt the middle finger with both. “A cannon the size the one reported by the team would have obliterated the building, if left to overload.”

The fact that they were discussing this as if it was news meant they had not even read the report despite all the effort Ana had put on it. Fuck them a thousand times.

“The Chief Engineer  _ knew  _ something was brewing and-- and he acted in consequence, risking his own life to control the--ah, explosion.”  Reinhardt continued, talking among teeth.

There was a moment of silence, only broken by the sound of his heartbeat thumping on his ears. Head up and straight, he made a great effort to just close his eyes instead of squeezing them in a grimace. His side was killing him. Truly. And he did not even know why. 

“Lieutenant--”

“Left to its own devices, the cannon would have— would have killed everyone and would have leveled up the whole building, like the Commander said. I fully stand by the Chief Engineer’s--”

Reinhardt groaned at the throbbing spreading from his side to the very last bone in his body.  _ Holy mother of all shits _ . He was in enough pain to share between three like him and still be rather bad. His legs trembled, and he leaned awkwardly on the wall trying to keep himself straight without making the pain worse.

Not would do.

“Hey,” Ana’s small hands found his sling-bound arm, his hip. “You look like shit.  _ Real shit _ . Let’s get you back to Med Bay right now.”

She was precious. He would give an arm to keep her always as close as she was right now. But the usually lovely smell of pines and mint of her shampoo made his stomach churn violently. Trying to get away from her, he took an unsteady step; pain exploded every _ fucking _ where, taking his breath away and choking his cry halfway through. 

His legs gave out and he fell on his knees. Not that he felt it. He was too busy chucking his guts out. And dying when every dry-retching bout set his nerves on fire again.

 

Seconds became hours. 

 

Minutes, ages. 

 

Finally, at some point in the next millennia, Reinhardt registered that he was sitting on the carpet. He was distantly aware of the rancid taste of acid, tears, and snot on the back of his mouth. Distantly, because his midsection and back throbbed with his heartbeat, dampening any other feeling.

He swallowed miserably, but did not even have the energy to complain or even open his eyes. He was tired.  _ So unnaturally tired. _ Even if he were not hurting to the last eyelash, he would not be able to move.

“Easy,” Ana was holding his forehead, he realized, her body pressed to his but careful of his injuries. “The doctors will be here any moment now and they’ll drug you up to your eyeballs.”

That would be a blessing, for a change. But only if they did it  _ before _ they moved him to Med Bay. Just thinking of moving an inch made him nauseous again. 

“Hey, eyes on my handsome mug.” The Commander snapped his fingers in front of him when he grimaced. “Yeah, talking to you, man. Ana’s about to chop my balls and serve them to me diced-- don’t want to know what she’ll do if you die on her, now.”

Ana’s hands trembled and she quickly took them away. She got up, too, and Reinhardt missed her immediately. Not only her warmth and the closeness of her touch, but also the way she had been supporting part of his weight. 

His muscles tensed, trying to keep him upright, and he wheezed at the fresh pain that made him see white spots in front of his eyes.  

“Hey, hey, shit--” Gabriel’s hands stabilized him, and soon his face ended resting on something warm and hard. Ribs, his mind somehow supplied, because they had boobs just above.  _ Ana’s _ . His good shoulder leaned on her hip and, after a brief quaking on Ana’s side, the pain decreased enough for Reinhardt to breathe again. “There. That’ll help you feel better.”

“I’m so going to kill you,” Ana’s voice was like steel, yet a small hand ran through Reinhardt’s hair and held his head in place.  

“I’m just making sure that, if he dies, he does so  _ happy _ .”

Their voices were starting to blend together, and the only thing Reinhardt cared about right now was sleeping or straight passing out, whatever was quicker. Unfortunately, even if his brain refused to translate to English any longer, it would not shut down.

He really wished it would when the doctors arrived.

Someone spew a bunch of English words right in front of his face. He knew that voice. Faith. Her small warm hands reached for his neck, then opened his eyelids one at a time. The light of a torch blinded him and made his stomach churn again, and Reinhardt knew he would not survive another bout of retching. Shit, no. 

Ana held him tighter when he writhed weakly, trying to escape the nurse. As if in retaliation, Faith pressed his abdomen just under the ribs on the right side; impossible as it seemed, he found the strength to cry out.

  
  


\---00oooo00---

  
  


Ana dropped to her knees when Reinhardt curled in a ball of misery as much as his body would go-- which was not much. He weighed like a truck, though, and she was not strong enough to keep him upright without his help. Thankfully, the two orderlies that had rushed in with the doctor a while before reached out to grab him. 

She gave them a grateful nod then glared at the nurse because really, the last thing Reinhardt needed was to feel worse than he already was.

“Sorry big guy,” the nurse sighed, oblivious to her glare and priming an injection-pen that contained a clear liquid inside. “It’ll be over soon, ok? I’ll give you a shot now. Two, actually.”

While the orderlies sandwiched Reinhardt to keep him upright with Ana’s help, the nurse prepared his arm.

“It was absolutely irresponsible on your part, Commander!” The doctor’s voice echoed in the room. He and Gabriel had been talking in angry hisses, but apparently their argument had reached the critical point. “He could be dead. Damn it, he’s not dead only because you’ll need a freaking nuke to kill him, but this has gone way too far.”

“Listen, I have a--”

“Guys, eyes back here,” the nurse snapped her fingers a couple of times. “Let’s go in three, two, one.”

With a bit of cooperation, they rolled the Crusader on a stretcher, favouring his left side. He barely whimpered at being moved, and Ana did not know if that was because he was half-unconscious or drugged, but she hated it all the same. Hated, hated,  _ hated _ to see him this helpless and sick.

“Hey, Faith. He’s bleeding,” one of the orderlies frowned. The nurse unzipped the hoodie and exposed Reinhardt’s back; a red stain was growing diagonally over the bandages, but that did not bother Ana as much as the uncovered skin.

It was mostly black and blue even on his  _ good _ side. She looked at her feet when her brain reminded her of the ton of rubble that fell over him and Torbjörn; her hands were shaking so much she had to cross her arms and squeeze them against herself.

It was ridiculous. She was a soldier. She was more than used to see people die. Every time they got into the aircraft they knew they may not return. 

She made her peace with her own demise long ago. It was something that weighed on her conscience, though, the idea of leaving Fareeha alone in the world, but she tried to be careful. In the same way, she was careful to protect the lives of others; even more that of her strange family members.

The thought made her shiver, and she knew she was on the right track of what had been bothering her this much. Torbjörn’s injuries were so severe he was still in danger, and the idiot-- She bit her lower lip. True, it was the first time her family almost died under her command since Samalut, but she had almost lost Jack and Gabriel several times before. Too many for her taste, really.

Losing any of them would be like losing a limb; Jack, who was both sunshine and mischief; the king of American food with bland spices, batter, and BBQs. The only one that ever knew how to get to her without asking, just by sheer empathy and observation skills.

And Gabriel, who was a thoughtful little shit and the best dancer she would ever meet. The best at making cookies and cakes. The absolute hero of needles and threads. The man she would devote all her art to, if there was a single artistic bone on her.

Yet, the idea of not seeing the German man-child again made her shake in her boots.

_ Why. Why?  It doesn’t happen with Torbjörn, and I like the grumpy man a whole lot more than it’s healthy. It doesn’t make any sense. _

Clearly, she must book a session with the counsellor.

“It’s ok,” the nurse opened a package of sterile gauze and applied pressure to the bleeding with it-- then taped it to the rest of the bandages. “Will take care of it later. Guys, let’s go now.”

The orderlies strapped Reinhardt to the stretcher the best they could, then pushed a bunch of buttons to make it hover over the ground. He was so still, though. So pale. He had lost his sunglasses at some point, and his closed eyes sank under dark circles.

Her fingers ran through his golden hair before Ana could even realize it, carefully, so very carefully not to bump into the stitches. She would go with them to Med Bay to make sure he was fine. Safe. That neither Gabriel nor the Board would screw it up again. 

How could they, really. 

Her hands shook again and she cursed inwardly. If she could not apologize about the chocolate earlier-- 

If he did not get up from there and squeeze the air out of her again-- 

If she could not listen to any more of his stories or give him the back when he was being an insufferable show-off at the gym… 

She did not know what she would do.

A shudder spread through her body like wildfire, tingling in her arms, squeezing her throat. She tried to swallow, to control herself. Shit. She had not felt like this since-- 

Ana sucked in a breath and withdrawn her hand from Reinhardt’s head in one go.

_ Samalut _ .

She had not felt like this since Samalut. Since Sam was half-dead inside his robotank.

Her heartbeat skyrocketed. A million thoughts flashed on her mind; smiles, laughs, stories. Happiness, despite the war. Nights shared over biscuits and horrible old films.

Hope.

Hope of retiring from active duty. Of training soldiers, perhaps, or doing boring paperwork for Gabriel. Of walking Fareeha to school and cultivating a small garden in their small house… House the idiot German could fill with his smile while bumping against every piece of furniture they had.

Her eyes burned. Her chest burned, her face burned, and her ice-cold arms shook up to her shoulders.

_ “ _ Captain, are you feeling alright?”

Faith had both of her hands on Ana’s arms, and she bit inside her mouth. Hard.

“I’m-- I’m tired. Long week,” she stuttered. There was no way she could have hidden the tears forming in her eyes, but the nurse did not point them out. 

“Ah, I’ll take care of her,” coming from nowhere, Gabriel put an arm around Ana’s shoulders and squeezed her against his body. “Do your magic with the Lieutenant and report back with his condition ASAP, ok?”

“Sure… Come by if you need anything, ok?” The nurse squeezed her arms one time, and let her go.

The moment the medical team left the meeting room, Ana shoved Gabriel out of her way. Or tried to, because the Commander only squeezed her closer.

“It’s OK, Ana--”

“No, it’s not!” she slammed her fists on his chest. “This is all your fault, fuck you--”

“Oh, oh, language miss,” he snorted sofly, getting her on a bear hug that hid her face on his shoulder. “Hush, now. It’s fine. He’ll be fine. You heard the doc, only a nuke would kill him.”

“That’s not the problem!” Ana sobbed, long tears burning her eyes.

Shit.  _ Shit _ . Fine, that was part of the problem, and she would give Gabriel  _ shit  _ about it once she managed to calm down. But at that moment, the only thing blaring code-red alarms in her mind was her thawing heart.

The heart that promised she would not have to worry again about  _ love _ .

Ana stomped on Gabriel’s foot and took advantage of his surprise to squiggle on his arms. Her shoulder found his chest and she threw him flying, all in one motion. He hit the ground like a bag of potatoes, just like in training but without the mats to soften the blow, and she broke into a run.

“You  _ feral _ little bitch--” He wheezed, but she ignored him and slammed the room’s door shut before sprinting down the corridor.

It could not be. It just-- no.

She pushed the elevator’s button several times, but when it failed to open its doors straight away, she took the stairs.

Panting, she reached the basement and rushed towards Med Bay. Her wrist datapad was beeping, but she did not care. The only thing in her mind now was to have proof. Proof that she --they-- were fine. That it was just Gabriel and her broken, tired brain playing games with her, goddamn them.

Proof that she was still Ana; the woman that could never give her partners what they wanted from her. The one that had decided she was best alone, without worries, without being a burden. The guilt-ridden Captain responsible for the deaths of at least a dozen good men and women, the one that trusted just enough to get by without forming attachments--

But that was it.

She  _ did _ form attachments. The Strike Team filled a hole in her life bigger than herself, even despite her reticence, her unwillingness. But it was fine. They had been  _ just fine _ for years, until… now.

Once at Med Bay’s doors, Ana stopped suit to force herself to calm down enough so the first nurse she met would not admit her in a ward. She had to get her facade up, even if she felt like she was about to fall on a deep black hole.  

It took a nurse less than a moment to point Ana in the right direction; straight down the corridor, then to the right. No questions asked, just a sympathetic look.

She could live with that.

The new ICU was larger and better furnished than the old rooms were. All the rooms had at least two beds and large glass panels to allow the nurses a quick look at their patients, although they had binders that could be closed for privacy. 

A total of twenty beds were in use at the moment, half of them by direct reports of her; good men and women fighting for their lives. Intubated, bandaged, sedated. Even those with no apparent external injuries were bleeding inside. Scarred for life. 

Ana kept walking, but seeing Torbjörn in his room made her stop again; with the tight deadline of the report she had not been able to visit him just yet. He was as pale as the sheets he was lying on, his dark blond mane caught in a ponytail over his chest. The gauze covering half of his face and the heavily-bandaged stump of his left shoulder glared at her. 

How many more dead or crippled colleagues and broken families would she carry on her conscience before the war ended? How many more could she endure?

Without realizing it, her feet had carried her all the way to almost the end of the corridor. Behind one of the glass panels were the doctor and the nurse from before. And, of course, Reinhardt himself.

He was lying on his right side, his bad arm resting on a large pillow that kept his shoulder aligned with his body. Mostly naked --because years ago the nurses got fed up of him ripping out gowns as if they were made of paper-- but for a sheet wrapped around his waist.

The bandages were gone, and she grimaced at the mess of bruises and needlework that was his back. The nurse was hooking his arms to a machine that Ana had no idea what--oh. She tapped something in the datapad and one of the lines filled with blood. Moments later it disappeared into a machine, only to be back into his body through the other line.

That was not just plain pain management. Ana bit inside her mouth. Perhaps the experimental painkillers were making him sick? That would make sense. 

Reinhardt squirmed weakly and the nurse strapped him to the bed before patting him in the arm. It was good that he was more responsive than before but, on the other side, it sucked if he was still in p--

“Finally found you, fucking hell,” Gabriel’s voice made her jump in her skin and turn around. He was walking towards her with long strides, his uniform crumpled and his shirt half-unbuttoned. “Are you-- oh. Well, not hugging you again, sorry. My ass still hurts.”

She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. She was not sorry, not at all, but appreciated that he went looking for her all the same-- even if she did not exactly want him there.

“What’s got you so riled up? And don’t tell me it’s him,” he growled and made a gesture towards the window. Then, suddenly, his frowny expression morphed into a cheeky one. “Oh. Has my little chick grown wings at last?”

“It’s not-- It’s not that, whatever it means,” Ana crossed her arms, if only to stop herself from hiding her face in her hands. “And shut up, I mean it. I’ve come here for-- for answers. Answers not polluted by your twisted games.”

“Ouch,” Gabriel put a hand on his chest, then rolled his eyes. “Come on, Ana. You’re the only one that’s not seen this coming.”

“Just because you find it  _ funny _ to mess with my head it doesn’t mean--”

“These past months? You’ve been happy as a clam,” he snorted, but his voice was void of malice. “ _ Happy _ . Yes, you, Captain ‘I’m better alone, get out of my way’. And you’ve made him the happiest man on Earth. Did you even realize that?”

Ana’s throat tightened on an impossible knot.

He was surprisingly right. She had looked forward to the afternoons where Reinhardt had come around to tell Fareeha stories. Sometimes they also had dinner, watched a film. Some nights they had stayed up for hours, just chatting about-- nonsense, really: places around the world. People. Plans, ideas. 

She had missed him these months they had been apart, that was the truth, but she thought it was because his laugh and his good spirits were contagious. Also because, really, he was just a call away now that he interacted with her frequently instead of watching from the sidelines. 

He had even picked up this habit of sending her stupid pictures and messages while he was deployed, making her laugh in the middle of the most boring and serious meetings. 

Hot tears rolled down her cheeks, the only thing that seemed alive in her otherwise frozen body. It had felt so natural to fall in sync once she had allowed him to be himself than she had not even realized-- 

Ana looked around without really seeing, trying to breathe. She let him in when she stepped up to fix their friendship.

Like an idiot.

“Ana, I can see in your eyes you’re going to do something stupid.”

“That’s my line, you know,” she sniffled, her voice broken. 

“It’s only fair I get to say it at least once,” Gabriel’s mischievous look lasted a moment. “Ah, only you would make a drama of something  _ good _ . You and Jack. Bloody hell,” he sighed, then continued. “Look. You don’t need to do anything now. The war is almost over; you could buy that house you’re always talking about and then perhaps think about giving Fareeha a blonde little sister...”

A sob shook her shoulders when he mentioned her dream house and he was there a second later, hiding her on his chest again.

She hated feeling like this. Yes, Gabriel was right-- Intrinsically it was a good thing, but this new  _ development _ shook the very foundation of everything she rebuilt after Samalut. 

It terrified her to  _ feel _ like she did then. To care like that. Not to say she did not trust herself to be able to fulfill her duties. Her situation with Sam was different in the Egyptian Army; they were together when she enlisted but they were on different squadrons until the war reached their country and it all went to hell. 

She just could not bear being exposed to taking the same decision on every mission.

“You’re a handful, you know that?” Gabriel squeezed her in his strong arms and let her cry. “You and Jack,” he continued after a while. “And that big jerk over there. And the angry beard in the other room-- you all are going to walk away from this shit of a war. Understand? And you will have the lives you were robbed of.”

Ana dug her fingers on his back when it became painfully obvious that he would not include himself in the pretty picture. Gabriel rarely talked about his marriage, his life away from Overwatch. She had seen the pictures; the baby girl he barely knew, the ever-waiting wife. The dog…  And she had also seen the way he looked at Jack and how incredibly fulfilled his job made him feel.

They were screwed up. Truly screwed up.

“Hey. It looks like the doc wants a word about your prince charming there,” Gabriel said after a moment of silence. “Want to join us?”

No. Yet, she could not keep squeezing their Commander for much longer or the rumours were going to reach the other side of the continent-- and there were more than enough rumours already.

Ana sniffled and let him go. Her eyes itched --the enhancements did not enjoy being drowned in salty tears-- and she wiped them with a hand before turning around. 

She still did not know what she was going to do, but she was good at solving problems. And now that she knew why she had been so angry, upset, and overall on edge during the past thirty-six hours, she could do something about the whole thing.

Even if it was something stupid, like Gabriel said.

The doctor was looking at them behind the glass impatiently, if she read his face correctly. With a nod, she followed Gabriel inside the small room-- noting that it was only small because the bed and the machines made up for almost two-thirds of the space.

“Commander, Captain, hope I didn’t interrupt anything,” he lowered his head a bit. “I’ve news, and you requested a report ASAP.”

“Of course, shoot,” Gabriel cleared his throat, and spared a glance at Reinhardt. “How’s he?”

“Stable, for now. But he’s--” a long, dog-like whine interrupted him, and the three of them turned to see the Crusader squirm weakly despite the nurse’s efforts to keep him still. “--uncomfortable. Will be for some hours, I’m afraid, until we cleanse his bloodstream and help his liver unclog.”

“His liver? Wow, do we know what happened?”

“The experimental drug was quite the failure, I’m afraid,” the doctor’s voice sounded disappointed. “Not only its analgesic power is quite limited, its base active elements in large amounts are toxic to his immune system.”

“Shit. And we--?”

“Let me finish. We have  _ safety  _ protocols, which we followed to a T. Put simply, the base elements are extremely common in analgesics we all take frequently. The real issue came when the nanites bonded to the phenacetin and the propionic acid was--”

“In English, please.” 

“His body hated the mix of the nanites and the drugs, kicking his immune system into overdrive,” the doctor tried again, more slowly this time. “The more the nanites bonded with the drugs, the worse the symptoms got across his body.”

Ana knew next to nothing about medicine, but she remembered her aunt’s battle with an autoimmune disease that attacked most of her joints, deforming them. She was in bad pain every day until she died, despite her medication.

“When his liver started breaking up bonded nanites, it freaked out. Unfortunately, liver pain radiates to the back until it becomes severe, so I couldn’t be sure without blood tests until-- well. Now.”

“Something else for his extensive medical records, I guess,” Gabriel shrugged, then looked at Ana before continuing. “Will he be all right, though?”

“Most likely. We’re cleansing his blood as we speak. When that’s done, we’ll give him immunosuppressants and will pulverize the nanites clogging his liver using ultrasounds. The remaining particles should be OK for him.”

Ana bit inside her mouth when Reinhardt squirmed again, his fingers clawing at the bedding as he tried to curl. It broke her heart to see him like this.

“Good,” Gabriel continued. “Now that we’re on with the sob stories, how’s the Chief Engineer doing?”

“No changes for now. That’s not bad, yet. While his body is mending, it needs all the rest that can get.”

“He’s got a hard skull, he’ll be fine,” Gabriel snorted, looking at his feet. “Thanks, doc. Appreciate your work.”

“Welcome. But don’t try so hard to undo it, please, Commander.”

“Yeah, duly noted,” he rubbed his frown with a thumb. He looked remorseful for his standards, although Ana knew it was a charade to get away without further reprimand. _ Mostly _ .

“Faith will stay with the Lieutenant for a while, ensure he doesn’t rip the lines off his arms. Keep him company,” the doctor put his hands on the pockets of his coat and shrugged. “I’ll be back in a while. Ah, and I need to fill up a report about this to the Board and the Dove’s Commission, since-- well. It was an internal incident.”

“Yeah,” Gabriel rolled his eyes. “I’ll claim responsibility for what happened, if it helps. They’re going to skin me alive, anyway.”

The doctor left them to get into the room just in front of Reinhardt’s. Ana had expected Gabriel to bolt the moment he was free, but he remained with her and the nurse for a moment. He was frowning, eyes glued on the tiles in front of him-- thinking, most likely.

“Now that I know you’ll not get into a killing spree, I’ll get back to work,” he said out of the blue after a couple of minutes of quiet contemplation, and was already at the door before Ana could say anything. 

She went after him.

“Wait. When do you plan to call the Board again?”

“Don’t know yet. Once they’re a bit less angry, perhaps,” he snorted, stopping by the wall. “Though that may not happen in this century.”

Ana had been too busy helping Reinhardt to pay much attention around her, but there had been more than a couple of angry words aimed at Gabriel. She could not side with his decision of taking the Crusader out of Med Bay, but their Commander had been damned for doing it and for  _ not _ doing it, too.

Typical of the Board.

“OK, just let me know. I can rewrite--”

“No. Go to the counsellor, have a good chat,” he shook his head and ran a hand through his short curls. “Rest. Sort yourself out-- at least enough so I know which teams I can count on when we need to get out there.”

She made a line with her lips. Gabriel knew her so well it hurt.

“I don’t want to cause any trouble…”

“It’s no trouble. We just need to plan ahead, because--” he let go a long sigh. He looked worn out, but he had not looked healthy since the smoke started being part of his life. “We need you. And him. At least for now.”

“I’ll figure it out,” Ana nodded slowly, fixing a lock of hair behind her ear. 

 

Somehow.

 

\-----

  
  


The visit to the counsellor that same afternoon had been  _ enlightening _ . Apparently, he had been aware of what was going on for ages. So much, he set Reinhardt up to share his life with Ana and Fareeha to both help him and encourage her to finally lower her walls.

Fuck him, really. It worked like a charm, but it was really low. 

“It is good for you, Ana,” he had said to her. “You need to stop  _ surviving _ and start living again. You are ready for it.”

“I almost buried everyone alive under a ton of rubble! How’s that being ready for--?”

“OK, stop there. You could not have had the certainty that it was going to collapse. Was it a possibility? Yes. An educated guess for someone more acquaintanced with buildings? Perhaps. Are any of those facts related in any way or form to your personal life? Absolutely not.”

>> “You go to unhealthy lengths to keep everyone under your command safe and alive, but you are a sniper. First and foremost. Ascended way above your merits due to the war, just like everyone else these days. But don’t berate yourself over something you were not qualified to deal with, please.”

And what was she qualified for, then? Just killing? Because if she was a lousy Captain and a lousy mother (she would apologize to Fareeha later, it was a promise), there were not many other things she knew how to do.

Damn it all. If there was something around she could kick to oblivion, it would be outside of the orbit of the Earth already.

Ana pushed the door of the officer’s kitchen open; it was late, she should be preparing for bed--  but she was not in the mood to go to her room and face Fareeha. Or worse, be left alone with her thoughts in the dark. It was either coffee or the gym, and the later already made her think of her  _ idiot _ problem. 

She hoped he was doing better already. 

“That won’t happen, you hear me? Not while I live.”

Gabriel’s words made her stop by the door and look at the super soldiers, who were practically bent over the same table, snarling at each other and now, also glaring at her. He let go a fistful of Jack’s shirt and sat down on his chair like a kid with a tantrum. There was even a broken mug on the ground, its pieces drowning on chocolate milk.

“What’s going on?” She asked, hoping she was not kicking the hornet’s nest. She was so not in the mood for anything that was not spread chocolate on toast.

Jack got up, dragging his chair and making the most noise possible while at it. There was something in his eyes that she could not read when he spared a last glance at the Commander before storming out. 

“Don’t tell me-- Somehow, you managed to do something stupid before I could even have the chance,” she snorted, going to the computer in the wall and requesting a robot cleaner. Then, she poured herself a mug of milk from the bottle in the fridge.

When Ana turned around, Gabriel was not there anymore.

Goddamnit.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Get your shit together, Ana. This is a good thing! You like him, he likes you... _what can go wrong?_
> 
> I've started the next chapter already. I think it'll be the last of this bunch but it'll take some months to be finished, though. Sorry!
> 
> You can come say hi in the meanwhile on Twitter, now -->https://twitter.com/nyaarr1


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